Chicago

Chicago, situated at the crossroads of America, has long been known for its restaurants and cuisine. Its food history highlights the history of Chicago as a place where cultures meet and clash and food is manufactured for the world. This book vividly recounts the history of food, dining, and cuisine in this quintessential American city.

Daniel R. Block, PhD, is a professor of geography and director of the Fred Blum Neighborhood Assistance Center at Chicago State University. He has particular interests in inner-city food access issues, the history of the modern food system, and Chicago food history and policy. He has completed a number of food access studies, including the Northeastern Illinois Community Food Security Assessment, a large scale food access study of the six-county Chicago metro area. In addition, Block is currently on the board of the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council, has been a member many community commissions on food access issues, is a past president of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society and was the founding chair of the Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.
Howard Rosing, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on urban food access, economic restructuring, community food systems, and food justice movements in Chicago and the Dominican Republic. He is the Executive Director of the Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning and Community Service Studies at DePaul University and co-director of DePaul's graduate program in Sustainable Urban Development (SUD). Rosing teaches courses on community food systems and food justice and his current research focuses on the role of urban agriculture in improving food access in economically distressed neighborhoods. He is also co-developer of the Chicago Urban Agriculture Mapping Project (cuamp.org), a public resource for documenting the city's food production.