Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934

""Chicago Skyscrapers goes well beyond the many glossy, superficial coffee-table books that celebrate the city's architecture.  Leslie instead provides a sophisticated examination of his subject, educating readers who are interested and willing to dig deeper.""--Chicago Book Review   ""How often does one read the proclamation by Windy City journalists that Chicago was the cradle of modern architecture?  In this book, Leslie reshapes that history with deep scholarship, immaculate prose, highly informative graphics, and the rare understanding of buildings that comes from being both a practitioner and an academic.  Essential.""--Choice ""Sure to become the new standard work on the subject.""--Journal of Illinois History ""Combining numerous elements--architectural and construction history; cultural, technological, and social history; political, planning, and economic history--Leslie presents a story that rings true as a portrait of professional life in the building world in all its ambition and ambiguity.""--Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians ""A sweeping and thorough examination of the forces that shaped that long generation of building construction--soil conditions, fire, materials, programs, technologies, clients, and codes. A thoughtful and fascinating view of an immensely active time in the history of Chicago architecture.""--Indiana Magazine of History ""This groundbreaking and ambitious study provides a thorough technical history of the development of Chicago skyscrapers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thomas Leslie's work on this vital subject synthesizes existing research and extends the field in exciting new directions."" --John A. Ochsendorf, Massachusetts Institute of Technology