‘I have struck a city– a real city – and they call it Chicago ... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages,’ so wrote Rudyard Kipling on his tour of America in 1899. From these inauspicious beginnings rose the ‘windy city’, home to the first skyscraper, gateway to the Great Lakes, birthplace of modern advertising and shorthand for stories about violent crime during America’s prohibition and Al Capone’s dominance of the ganglands. This book offers candid views of an extraordinary town, which has attracted citizens from all over Europe and the rest of the world. They have made the city what it is today – and written about it variously with affection, loyalty, disgust and amazement.