The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee tells the story of innovation and enterprise creation in Milwaukee during the Century of Progress-the hundred years starting after the conclusion of the US Civil War. It was a remarkable era. Milwaukee was one of the principal centers of industrial innovation in the United States and became known as "the Machine Shop of the World." As the name of the book implies, the book features the incredible machines built in the Milwaukee area during this period. In the process, it highlights the engineers who created these machines and summarizes the history of the numerous companies that helped the greater Milwaukee area achieve prominence in industrial design and manufacturing. In telling the story of Milwaukee's industrial history, the book discusses over one-hundred engineering accomplishments, summarizes individual stories of over seventy early Milwaukee companies, provides the biographies of dozens of engineering innovators, and discusses the significance of their engineering achievements. Richly illustrated, the book contains hundreds of photographs and drawings to help tell the story of industrial Milwaukee. The stories of industrial Milwaukee are not just of historical curiosity. The engineering innovation that occurred during this period resulted in commerce that was essential to the development of the City and to the livelihood of thousands of its citizens. Many of these companies survive and several have grown to become major international firms. Their stories reveal important characteristics that may help to point the way toward enhanced innovation and commerce in the future. As noted by John Gurda, Milwaukee writer and historian, "Until the Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee, the stories of these innovations and the men behind them had been told largely in fragmentary fashion-an article here, a scholarly reference there. Tom Fehring has assembled the entire cast of characters in a single book that is a testament to talent, an ode to ingenuity, and a singular contribution to the history of American industry."

Other historians have tended to treat black urban life mainly in relation to the ghetto experience, but in Black Milwaukee, Joe William Trotter Jr. offers a new perspective that complements yet also goes well beyond that approach. The blacks in Black Milwaukee were not only ghetto dwellers; they were also industrial workers. The process by which they achieved this status is the subject of Trotter's ground-breaking study. This second edition features a new preface and acknowledgments, an essay on African American urban history since 1985, a prologue on the antebellum and Civil War roots of Milwaukee's black community, and an epilogue on the post-World War II years and the impact of deindustrialization, all by the author. Brief essays by four of Trotter's colleagues--William P. Jones, Earl Lewis, Alison Isenberg, and Kimberly L. Phillips--assess the impact of the original Black Milwaukee on the study of African American urban history over the past twenty years.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.

From City Hall to the Pabst Theater, reminders of the past are part of the fabric of Milwaukee. Yet many historic treasures have been lost to time. An overgrown stretch of the Milwaukee River was once a famous beer garden. Blocks of homes and apartments replaced the Wonderland Amusement Park. A quiet bike path now stretches where some of fastest trains in the world previously thundered. Today's Estabrook Park was a vast mining operation, and Marquette University covers the old fairgrounds where Abraham Lincoln spoke. Author Carl Swanson recounts these stories and other tales of bygone days.

"The Making of Milwaukee chronicles the history of a hometown metropolis, a community whose past has produced one of the most livable big cities in America and, at the same time, created some daunting social and economic problems. John Gurda's book is the first full-length history of Milwaukee to appear since 1948."--BOOK JACKET.

From the author of Lost Milwaukee comes an exploration of the criminal side of the Cream City. Milwaukee saw its share of violence as it transformed from frontier village to modern metropolis. The city was barely established when an argument over a bridge linking east and west was nearly settled with cannon fire. A local developer killed his estranged wife, severed her head, and burned it in the furnace of the apartment building he built. A wronged woman murdered her lover on a busy downtown street and was found innocent by a sympathetic jury. Another woman lethally poisoned her family and laughed about it in the press. From a robbery in which the bandits got away by stealing a streetcar to the attempted assassination of President Theodore Roosevelt, local historian Carl Swanson uncovers dramatic true stories of villainy and murder from Milwaukee's long-forgotten past.