This book was a really cool look into an alternate version of Chicago. It was clearly well researched and thought out, but I just found it a little difficult to follow at times.

I'm frustrated at myself for being late on this book because I found it so engrossing. Make Me a City tells the tale of the first hundred years of Chicago in an alternate reality. As a Chicago native, I was fascinated by the sprawling arc of the story, but I can see that for others, it may be a little heavy on the research. I really enjoyed these details and thought it created a very rich backdrop.

In this novel Carr tells the story of the first hundred years of Chicago, framed around the supposed 1902 "Alternative History of Chicago" by one Milton Winshop and a variety of "primary sources". The "alternative history" is closer to the history as we know it than the whitewashed 19th century version--as a historian I find this point on so-called revisionist history fascinating, but Carr does not actual address the point specifically.

Carr goes on to tell his story through a mix of people--Potowatomies, original settlers, immigrants, boosters, transplants from the East, laborers, engineers, aldermen, builders, men, women, children. We see some children grow up, immigrants find their calling, residents suffer and succeed. Some of the characters are real people, others are fictional representations. They occasionally interact--and honestly this can be a little confusing as vastly different characters come and go and you jump forward in time. But I love this kind of structure. It is sweeping, it is disjointed and choppy and you get a picture of so many different kinds of people. I kept reminding myself "THIS IS FICTION"--I also tend to be annoyed by books that use real people to tell fictional stories. I thought he did this well, but where were fictional words put into real peoples' mouths? I'm not sure, and as a historian it bugs me. But I could not stop myself from enjoying this book.

I did wish there was more on the Potowatomies, and I found some of the writing in dialect (of Point du Sable, and one of the Irish brothers) to be a bit much--but I don't often like writing that is made to seem in dialect, it always feels false to me. I also would have liked a character list.

I am amazed that this is a first novel. The complex structure is so well done, it doesn't seem like it. The author is also English--though well traveled and not young. This novel may not be perfect, but it is an accomplishment.

The city in question is Chicago, a city I love. So, an opportunity to read a fictionalized history sounds intriguing. Given the length, I am picturing something in the style of James Michener or Edward Rutherford. That, to me, is not what Make Me a City by Jonathan Carr delivers. Because of its multitude of characters, its episodic structure, and at times its language, the book proves too great a challenge to follow.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2020/03/make-me-city.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

I was excited to read Make Me a City. After reading Erik Larson’s book, I was hoping to be engrossed in another story about Chicago’s rich history. I tried many times to get caught up in Carr’s book but became bogged down in his research. Thus, I kept putting the book down and kept trying to return to finish it.

I am always on the lookout for something different, and so I leapt at the chance to read this publication free and early. Thanks go to Net Galley and Henry Holt. It’s for sale now.

The story is set in and around Chicago, back when the city was first born. It tells a tale of shifting alliances and double crosses; yet in other ways it is an old story, one in which a Caucasian interloper cannot bear to see a Black man rise to a position of wealth and influence. It’s not an easy read.

Conceptually the story is strong, but the author tries to do too much at once. Shifting points of view; development of disparate characters; and an old time dialect that is challenging all by itself serve to render the story muddy and confusing. Too much is lost, and at the halfway point, I gave it up and commenced skimming.

Despite this, I believe Carr is a talented writer and I like his ideas. I would read his work again.

Jonathan Carr’s Make Me A City brought the history of Chicago to lifesized proportions. No longer are these factoids and history tidbits in textbooks. His stories are lush and real and draw you into the early world of an ambitious city to be. I enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it.

I was very intrigued by this book as I am from the city of Chicago. As previous reviewers have stated this story was a little too slow moving for my liking and did jump around quite a bit, therefore making it difficult to keep up with and find the motivation to continue reading. The historical and informational aspects were interesting, however it just wasn't enough for me to want to sit down and enjoy reading this. It read more as just history to me as opposed to historical fiction, where I would have liked to see some more action.

Don't expect a straight narrative from this tale of Chicago between 1800 and 1900. Carr has used a variety of voices and sources to pull together what is more a series of vignettes than a conventional novel. This makes for some confusion early on but is ultimately rewarding because it reflects the patchwork nature of a great city. Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable and his descendants figure prominently, as is appropriate. You might find one voice more compelling than another but don't count on it necessarily reappearing. I found this fascinating but understand why others might find it frustrating. Thanks to net galley for the ARC. I knew virtually nothing about Chicago before this book and found it very informative.

I’ve only been to Chicago a handful of times but I absolutely love the city and was so looking forward to learning the history. But this book did not live up to my expectations. Each chapter covers a specific timeframe of a year or more starting in the 1800’s and it moves between different events, happenings, and following several different people. I didn’t care for the flow of the story, when I would just got interested in one chapter, the next one would be on a completely different subject.
All was not completely lost though, I did learn many facts that I did not know before, such as the raising of the city, the sewage problem and the building of the canal, but I felt like the story was shallow on human interest and could have been told in a more fluent manner.
My biggest con on the entire book was the flow. I would not consider this an actual novel, it is a medley of historic facts from eyewitnesses, hearsay, newspaper articles and letters. Not what I was expecting. If you are a history buff, it may appeal to you.
I was given an advanced copy from Henry Holt and Company through Net Galley for my honest review, this one gets 3***’s.

Carr’s entertaining and uniquely written novel relates the “history” of Chicago’s first hundred years. Using many plot devices to unfold the story to readers, the novels storyline comes to us through excerpts from an “alternative” history manuscript, journal entries, letters, and newspaper articles among other devices. There is an eclectic mix of characters and their descendants, both historic and fictional, some who travel through the narrative, while others appearing only briefly.

This sweeping portrayal of Chicago at its best and worst, its highs and lows, is exceptional. From prairie town to booming metropolis, Chicago and its residents come alive with the details and descriptions in Carr’s prose. He makes us feel the struggle and abject poverty of the immigrants as well as the greed and opulence of monied class.

This is a sweeping and compelling novel of what is takes to make a city. Whether you are from Chicago, have visited there, or just love an engaging and expansive work of historical fiction, be sure and pick this one up.

Make me a City is a sprawling, raucous, noisy novel set in the early years of Chicago. Told through the lens of the founding father Pointe du Sable and his descendants, “City” delves the depths of the striving, ambitious, often criminal but always energetic stories of the first inhabitants of the city on the prairie.

I loved the way story kept returning to the family of du Sable. In every generation, the history kept returning to the lie that formed the founding story, and its reverberations through the years.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Make Me a City is a lot of book to read. It is indeed slow going and just frustrating at times. I usually like this type of sweeping saga story, but I got stuck with this one. Maybe too many facts and not enough story to carry it along. Chicago's development through the 19th century is an epic journey, but this book just doesn't quite capture the grandeur of that.

I received a free copy of Make Me a City from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

This lengthy historical fiction reveals the "facts" behind the founding and growth of the city of Chicago through the 19th century. Facts is in quotation marks because the author, through his major narrator-writer Prof. Milton Winship, uses the term alternative facts quite frequently in his tale. The cast of characters is quite lengthy and readers will see them at different stages of their lives and at different stages in Chicago's evolution from dirty backwater to major metropolitan city.

Throughout Make Me a City events and characters intertwine in such a way that there are few heroes and few pure successes. Greed, envy, and racism motivate some while wonder, grit, and love establish others. Real events like the establishment of a sanitary water system, the reversal of the Chicago River, the expansion of the railroad, and the World's Fair are clearly utilized to portray Chicago's growth in size and national importance. But such positive steps toward urban growth come at a substantial cost in lives and dollars. Powerful, unscrupulous people frequently managed to get a cut because immediate profit was viewed as more important than long-term safety and health.

Make Me a City is a sweeping view of a century of change with no illusion that sacrifices and loss are part of development and financial growth. Some suffer so that a few will wildly succeed. This is not a fast read but it is well worth the investment of time.

I love historical fiction and I love Chicago. I wanted to love this book, but it was not what I was hoping for. As pther reviewers have said, it's a SLOW read.

The devil is in the details. This historical novel lost itself in the research. This feels like an early draft, not a finished novel. There is a lot of information packed in here, but where is the story? High potential, but just didn’t hit for me.

I wanted to love this book. Sadly as other reviewers mention, it jumps around, it is SLOW, and I just could not finish it. It takes a LOT for me not to finish a book but after starting it several times and barely making it into the double digits of percentage done, I realized this was not the book for me.

This was one strange book. It is a work of historical fiction and probably the most unusual book of that category that I have ever read. I am at something of a loss as to how to approach writing a review of this book. To start I should note that I am a lifelong resident of the Chicago area and an avid fan of the history of Chicago. When I saw this book being offered for review on NetGalley I had to apply for the opportunity to read it. I have given this book 3 stars because it is a satisfactory story and worth the time and effort to read but it lacks the spark to make it to 4 stars. This, of course, is my sole opinion and I can readily expect other readers to either agree or disagree as the book's quirkiness will strike people differently.

When I started to read the book I was greatly disappointed. It was difficult to read as the author ostensibly quoted from journal and diary sources for his information and these entries were written by people with marginal literacy skills. If that wasn't enough the author then skips around to stories about other characters whose life events occurred at different times. So there were leaps in time and story and characters. It began to feel as though this book was an anthology or collection of short stories about various minor characters whose lives were lived during various periods during the history of Chicago. It also became apparent that this book was not really a history of Chicago but about the people the author chose to depict that lived during the creation of this city. In that view the book became more acceptable to me. I have always found histories that report events from the perspective of the people that lived through the events, the frontline soldier for instance, to be highly interesting and informative. Such perspectives give the event a more human scale and appreciation. So when I viewed the story in that manner I was put in mind of Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie" as this book seemed to create a similar tone. It was about obscure and forgotten characters from the history of Chicago and their struggles as this city was being built. Surprisingly, however, my belief that this was an anthology or collection of biographical sketches of forgotten Chicagoans was soon put to rest.

As the book progressed the stories of these various citizens were dovetailed, intersected, and merged with the stories of the other characters. With this occurrence the book took on another form entirely and became more of a novel with a mysterious flow whose course was unknown. Then more puzzling yet was the idea that this book was actually to be taken as an excerpt from an early 20th century work by a Professor Milton A. Winship from the University of Chicago. Whether or not Prof. Winship was a real person or a fiction I have as yet been unable to determine. So far I have found nothing to verify his existence so I assume he is fictional as is his book which was promoted as an alternative history. This professor espoused the belief that it was the historian's job to weave the collected facts of history into a more palatable form and that if this required the use of assumptions and intuition or creativity then so be it. After reading that I more clearly understood what the author may have been trying to achieve as the professor's book excerpts clearly paralleled the book. So was this book about the professor's book or was his book merely being used as a source by the author? That was part of what confused me and still does. All through the book the author notes the alleged sources from which the material used has been derived though without footnotes I am unable to verify the legitimacy of these sources. More fiction?

On the whole I enjoyed the book as it took me on an unexpected ride. I learned a bit about my city that I did not know and that is always a good thing. I also admired the author's imaginative telling of a story and weaving these disparate lives into a plot that spanned a century of Chicago history while at the same time giving meaningful reference to significant events in the history of this city. I probably should give the book 4 stars but I guess I am a purest about my hometown history and since the history was merely a setting for the author's story and not the centerpiece it will have to be three.

Make me a city ⭐️

Chicago intrigued me because thats my home but it fell flat.
The characters were richly developed (a bit too much at times) and the city was minuscule in comparison.
I wasnt a fan of the writing and found it difficult to get through. We bounce through so many timelines and so many people that it was hard to follow and even harder to enjoy.

Thank you so much to Henry and Colt Co via netgalley for sending me an ARC copy of Make me a city by Jonathan Carr. This will be released on March 19, 2019.
All opinions are my own.

A panoramic/episodic history of nineteenth century Chicago told through the lives of the famous and not so famous Chicagoans of that century. I can best,describe the book as a literary James Michener novel( think Hawaii, Alaska, and Centennial) but limited to one century and one city. My only criticism of the book is that the storytelling is a little bit elliptical but as a Chicagoan , I found the history of the city and its famous personages fascinating. Recommended