Customer Reviews

Cream City Chronicles: Stories of Milwaukee's Past

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bend. John Gurda is an excellent story-teller/writer/historian. This book is a collection of 65 of his articles that have appeared in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel over the years & continues the first Sunday of every month. Sometimes historical, sometimes tinged with his own political views, but always interesting. If you love Milwaukee as he does, & have lived here for a period of time you will connect with these stories some in the distant past & some more recent. Some of the places still remain. If you are of a certain age you can remember some of them or at least your parents or grandparents can if you encourage them. Milwaukee was one of the most European of American cities. The Munich of North America it was called. Indeed it had a thriving German tradition in food, language, architecture & culture. Sadly, much of that was beaten out by two world wars. Milwaukee's broad ethnicity still remains. Milwaukee's strong socialist politics in much of the 20th century may be unique among major American cities. It certainly contributed to our reputation as one of the cleanest cities in The United States.

A compilation of Gurda's columns from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Brief, informative, and entertaining--he covers the early settlers, socialist mayors, ice harvesting, and landmarks like Borchert Field and the Auditorium.

This book is worthwhile for the charming views it gives of Milwaukee history. Each chapter is short and not very deep, but it gives a glimpse into the past. If memory serves, these had been published previously as newspaper articles, so that explains the brevity.

I was constantly annoyed by the author's polictically correct sermonizing at the end of most of the chapters. I still enjoyed the real history he included before he got to his final preachy paragraph.

The book is by no means a history of Milwaukee, but a collection of interesting vignettes on the past.