About this Event
Join us at Marz Brewing for the release of Dominic A. Pacyga's new book, Clout City: The Rise and Fall of the Chicago Political Machine. He will be in conversation with Paul Durica, Director of Exhibitions at the Chicago History Museum. This is a free event, but RSVPs are requested.
Local indie bookstore after-words will be handling book sales on-site during the entirety of the event, and there will be an author signing after the main book talk.
Dominic A. Pacyga is professor emeritus of history in the Department of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences at Columbia College Chicago. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, American Warsaw: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Polish Chicago, also from the University of Chicago Press.
Paul Durica is a writer and popular historian. He is the Director of Exhibitions at the Chicago History Museum and has a PhD in English from the University of Chicago. He lives in Bridgeport with his wife and son. Learn more about his work at pocketguidetohell.com
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Unearths the religious and cultural roots of a powerful political machine that empowered some everyday Chicagoans but ruled all of the city for decades.
In politics, clout is essential. Too often, it determines whether insider access is granted or denied, favors are given or withheld, and payoffs are made or received. But Chicago clout, as we know it today, is even more potent than that—it’s the absolute currency of a social, cultural, and political order that is self-reinforcing and self-dealing. Or, at least, it was.In Clout City, award-winning historian Dominic A. Pacyga reveals how cultural, ethnic, and religious forces created this distinctive system—and ultimately led to its collapse. Tracing clout’s origins in the Irish Catholic–dominated working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, shaped by De La Salle Institute and home to the legendary Daley family, Pacyga shows how communal ties can be a force for good and also the deepest wellspring of corruption. He maps Chicago’s unique politics to its remarkable history, from the Great Fire of 1871 through its rise and decline as an industrial center to its emergence as a global city in the early twenty-first century. With deep research and firsthand experience from a lifetime in the city, Pacyga argues that Chicago’s politics is understood best as a mixture of cultural and religious influences and more worldly pursuits, exploring how both Jewish and Catholic communalism played central roles in the creation and sustenance of the Chicago machine.Chicago’s politics today aren’t as defined by its distinctive brand of clout. But they are shaped by clout’s decline and the ghost of the machine. Pacyga’s tour of the city’s multilayered past is an indispensable guide to its present and future.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Marz Community Brewing Company, 3630 South Iron Street, Chicago, United States
USD 0.00
