Local historian Margery Blair Perkins (1907-1981) provides a detailed narrative charting the growth and development of the North Shore city of Evanston, Illinois, a place boasting a rich and multi-layered history. Perkins brings the citys past to life through stories of its residents, architecture, and growth over the years. She charts the development of the city from its earliest days when it was known as the settlement of Grosse Pointe and later Ridgeville to its modern manifestation as a bustling city just outside of Chicago. Within a larger historical narrative, Perkins provides biographies of noted residents as she documents the evolution of the citys organizations, cultural life and institutions, such as Northwestern University.

Enjoy a trip through historic Evanston. See how Davis Street and Sherman and Orrington Avenues appeared around the beginning of the 20th century. Learn how Fountain Square has evolved and how the Merrick Rose Garden is connected. See Northwestern University as it was founded, along with early Evanston's lakefront, city hall, library, and post office. Many of the buildings shown in this book are still standing, while others have been demolished. In some postcard views the stately elm trees of later decades are seen as saplings. The Library Plaza Hotel, North Shore Hotel, and Georgian Hotel are here as well, along with the historic schools, churches, train depots, and, of course, Grosse Point Lighthouse, which all helped shape the city in its formative years.

This colorful and perceptive study presents persuasive evidence that the saloon, far from being a magnet for vice and crime, played an important role in working-class community life. Focusing on public drinking in "wide open" Chicago and tightly controlled Boston, Duis offers a provocative discussion of the saloon as a social institution and a locus of the struggle between middle-class notions of privacy and working-class uses of public space.

"Frances Willard (1839-1898) was one of the most prominent American social reformers of the late nineteenth century. This biography explores Willard's life, her contributions as a reformer, and her broader legacy as a women's rights activist in the United States. As the long-time president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Willard built a national and international movement of women that campaigned for prohibition. Emphasizing what she called "Do Everything" reform, Willard became a central figure in campaigns supporting woman suffrage, economic justice, Christian socialism, and numerous other reforms during the Gilded Age. A devout Methodist, Willard helped shape predominant religious currents of the late nineteenth century, including being an important figure in the rise of the social gospel movement in American Protestantism. In addition to chronicling Willard's life, the biography examines ways that Willard crafted a distinctive culture of women's leadership not fully explored by other scholars. Despite her enormous fame during her lifetime, the book examines reasons why Willard's legacy has been eclipsed by subsequent twentieth-century women reformers"--