Events

Guided by HGS instructor Bob Jene, this tour starts with a look at the City of Chicago amenities on the lakefront in Grant Park, and their effect on land values in neighboring private properties especially along Prairie and Indiana Avenues south of Roosevelt.  This is the museum campus area with a mixed style of housing.  We continue down to the Central Station Area where there are some vintage mansions on Prairie Avenue. We will stop to look at assessor’s data on the value of units, properties and parking spaces and how they relate to location.

America’s only Political Economy Book Club discusses Candide, Voltaire’s 1759 masterpiece that ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies and philosophers through allegory.  As Jean Starobinski notes,”The fast-paced and improbable plot—in which characters narrowly escape death repeatedly, for instance—allows for compounding tragedies to befall the same characters over and over again.”

It’s only a hundred pages or so depending on the translation and format, and is available in English translation free from Project Gutenberg  (in several formats) as well as from the Internet Archive, where there is also an audiobook. 

PEBC coordinator Bob Matter would appreciate an RSVP, if possible, from those planning to attend.

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were sent by the French government to study the American prison system. In his later letters Tocqueville indicates that he and Beaumont used their official business as a pretext to study American society instead. They arrived in New York City in May of that year and spent nine months traveling the United States, studying the prisons, and collecting information on American society, including its religious, political, and economic character.

— Wikipedia

Democracy in America was one of the products of this trip. It’s available in several translations, some free such as this one and this one, also free in audio format.  On March 29, the Political Economy Book Club will discuss volume 1.

PEBC meetings are free and open to everyone who has read and wishes to talk about the book under discussion. Convenor Bob Matter appreciates an RSVP if possible.

A subsequent meeting will discuss volume 2

Metropolitan Planning Council’s Alden Loury will discuss his research into the costs that racial and ethnic segregation impose on all of us here, and might be persuaded to hint at the recommendations to come from phase 2 of the study.  We have a post with a bit more information.