Building the black metropolis : African American entrepreneurship in Chicago /

"My kind of town, Chicago!" This boisterous paean to the Windy City echoes the voices of the black entrepreneurs who helped make it an economic powerhouse. Weems (Wichita State) and Chambers (Univ. of Illinois) provide a detailed look into the forces and people who shaped Chicago's black business metropolis since the 1800s. From early service providers--tailors and barbers--to large, black-owned consumer products and media companies such as Johnson Products and Ebony, Chicago's black influence has grown. Business leaders George Johnson, John H. Johnson, Robert Abbott, Anthony Overton, Jesse Binga, Annie Malone, and Madame C. J. Walker paved the way for Oprah Winfrey. Home to over 6 million people, Chicago "has a history that could fill a library of books," say the authors. Much of that legacy was created by black businesses--"a city within a city"--and entrepreneurs such as Madame Walker, the first female self-made millionaire in the US, who said, "I had to make my own opportunity. But I made it!" Recommended for upper-division and graduate business students and researchers/faculty. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Patricia G. Kishel, Cypress College