Chicago in the Age of Capital: Class, Politics, and Democracy during the Civil War and Reconstruction by John B. Jentz and Richard Schneirov

of portraits of people in the Price Hill neighborhood. Simple and powerful, the images show a refreshing diversity in age, ethnicity, and culture. Wilson’s style and familiarity with the neighborhood allow him a level of intimacy with his subjects, whose tenderness and humanity he manages to capture in a single, fl eeting moment. If the strength in these collected narratives is their differences, then their weakness is a byproduct of their similarities. In a city of fi ftytwo neighborhoods and endless suburbs, the collection focuses extensively on OvertheRhine and its development successes and struggles. Because of that, many essays cover similar ground and similar history, which leads to inevitable repetitiveness, and, even more, a reinforcement that stories from the city’s urban core dominate city life. While downtown and OvertheRhine, in particular, offer abundant avenues for thoughtful examination and refl ection about Cincinnati, reading slightly differing accounts of the same events— as the essays were written and originally published at different times— makes the collection less cohesive as well as less comprehensive. Most all of the pieces in the anthology have been published elsewhere fi rst, some in print and many online, which makes them feel at times disjointed despite their common threads. It is not a neat and tidy collection, but it doesn’t set out to be. Instead, it is a celebration and an admonition. It is a history lesson and a piece of art. McQuade describes Cincinnati as “beautiful and sometimes troubled.” The phrase applies just as well to this ambitious compendium of creative endeavors as it does the city itself. Elissa L. Yancey university of cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio