| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Chicago River: An Illustrated History and Guide to the River and Its Waterways. 2nd ed. By David M. Solzman. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006. xiii + 289 pages. Includes illustrations, bibliography, and index. Cloth $20.00.
As the archetypal American industrial city and a metropolis that helped transform the Midwest into the nation's agricultural heartland, Chicago is of special interest to many environmental historians. In the second edition of The Chicago River, David Solzman updates his examination of the city's eponymous river.	1
In section 1 of the book, Solzman provides a brief history of the region's landforms and waterways. With the aid of maps and diagrams, chapter 2 surveys the physical geography of this "decidedly swampy" area (p. 9). Chapter 3, which will be of most interest to students of environmental history, traces the alterations made to the waterways of the Chicago region since the 1830s. Solzman's main theme here is how Anglo-Americans transformed the waterscape to lay the foundation for the emergence of Chicago as the dominant entrepôt city of the Midwest. Alterations like the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the famous reversal of the Chicago River created a water network that "connect[ed] the flowing waters of the mid-continent to the open waters of the Great Lakes" (pp. 5–6).	. . .

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