9 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American historian and science fiction author — University of Chicago professor of Renaissance history — author of the Terra Ignota series (SF starting with Too Like the Lightning) — expert on the history of censorship, heresy, and early modern thought.
Erik Larson's 2003 account of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer H.H. Holmes who operated during it — weaving together the stories of architect Daniel Burnham (building the fair) and Holmes (building his Murder Castle).
American financial economist — Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution — former University of Chicago Booth School professor — author of The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level — who blogs as The Grumpy Economist.
American essayist — longtime editor of The American Scholar — author of dozens of essay collections — Northwestern University lecturer — the most elegant American essayist of the 20th and 21st centuries in the tradition of Montaigne, Lamb, and Hazlitt.
German-American political philosopher at the University of Chicago who argued for 'esoteric writing' — that great philosophers concealed heterodox views between the lines to avoid persecution — and who read Plato, Maimonides, and Machiavelli as making claims deeper than their surface text reveals.
American utilities entrepreneur who was Thomas Edison's personal secretary — and who built Chicago's electricity system and one of the largest utility holding company empires in America — before his empire collapsed in the 1932 Great Depression, becoming one of the great cautionary tales of leveraged holding companies.
American community organizer from Chicago who wrote Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals — the foundational texts of American left community organizing — whose tactical manual for power-building through local community organizations influenced generations of activists.
American community organizer and author — who created modern community organizing in Chicago — author of Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals — whose organizing methods became the model for subsequent political organizing on both left and right.
American historian at Chicago who wrote The Rise of the West and Plagues and Peoples — arguing that world history must be understood in terms of interaction between civilizations (diffusionism) rather than the independent development of separate societies, and that infectious disease has been as decisive as warfare in determining historical outcomes.