Nature's Metropolis

Chicago and the Great West

By: William Cronon

Narrated by: Jonah Cummings

Awarded the 1992 Bancroft Prize and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award for Best Nonfiction Book of 1991.

In this groundbreaking work, William Cronon gives us an environmental perspective on the history of nineteenth-century America. By exploring the ecological and economic changes that made Chicago America's most dynamic city and the Great West its hinterland, Mr. Cronon opens a new window onto our national past. This is the story of city and country becoming ever more tightly bound in a system so powerful that it reshaped the American landscape and transformed American culture. The world that emerged is our own.

©1992 William Cronon (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Good book, dire narrator

This classic, important book of environmental history is excellent and rewarding every time I read it, and doesn't suffer as an audiobook for lack of illustrations. The book reads very well even without seeing the charts. The complex accounting of the development of Chicago and its hinterland makes for a very engaging listen.

However, this particular reader strongly detracts from the text. Words are frequently mispronounced (if I hear potah-wah-tomeee one more time..) making obvious and distracting breaks from believing our narrator knows what he's talking about. An attempt at adding character has him putting on very poor and distracting accents when reading quotations. I also particularly did not enjoy the cadence of the reading, though I understand that is subjective.

Lovely book, I strongly suggest people read it in their lives, but maybe let Professor Cronon's own voice read in your own mind rather than get the audiobook.

Hinterlands

Cronon‘s masterpiece is still the standard in environmental history. Doctoral dissertations usually do not lend themselves to page-turning reading experience. Nature's Metropolis is the expectation from start to finish it captures the reader and transports them to Chicagoland in the time of its most rapid expansion.

Missing illustrations ?

Interesting book about the economic and environmental history of Chicago and its surroundings.

But how do I get access to the many illustrations/charts I'm sure the book contains ?

The narrator is fine except for his terrible attempt at a British accent when quoting British characters.

Good story

After living in Chicago for years it's good to learn about why it held such a dominant place in the Midwest. Also, as someone who works in trading, it was good to learn about the origins of the Chicago Board of Trade.

I agree that the attempts at an English accent are completely absurd, but otherwise the performance is good.

Great Book: THE Book to Understand Chicago

My father, an American historian, told me this was an excellent book. He was right. The author explains how various factors came together to transform Chicago and the whole Midwest -- geography, lakes, rivers, canals, railroads, lumber, McCormick reapers, meat-packing, grain silos, stock exchanges, futures markets, refrigeration, rural free delivery, mail order catalogs, the world's fair, Maybe those don't sound like topics you think you want to read about, but Cronon weaves them all together skillfully. He also explains how Chicago kicked St. Louis's a$$. The book has a sort of cult following among historians -- and I can see why. Every historian wishes they could understand this much, see all these connections, and tell a story so well. Very few actually can. I found it slow going for about eighty pages and thought some of the early chapters could have been a little shorter, but then I really got going and saw how the various factors were connecting and it was like "Please don't bother me! I'm listening to Nature's Metropolis!"