John Gurda is a Milwaukee-born writer and historian who has been studying his hometown since 1972. He is the author of twenty-one books, including histories of Milwaukee-area neighborhoods, industries, and places of worship. The Making of Milwaukee is Gurda’s most ambitious effort. With 450 pages and more than 500 illustrations, it is the first full-length history of the community published since 1948. He served as scriptwriter and host of an Emmy Award-winning documentary series based on the book in 2006. Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods, a richly illustrated geographic companion to the general history, followed in 2015. In addition to his work as an author, Gurda is a lecturer, tour guide, and local history columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His undergraduate degree is a B.A. in English from Boston College, and he holds an M.A. in Cultural Geography and an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The common thread in all of Gurda’s work is an understanding of history as “why things are the way they are.
MILWAUKEE: CITY OF NEIGHBORHOODS Geography matters in Milwaukee. From the very beginning, rivers and railroads divided the city into distinct “Sides”—North, South, East, and West—with dramatically different characters. Within those districts dozens of smaller communities developed—places like Bay View, Layton Park, Pigsville, Washington Heights, Rufus King, Riverwest, and North Point. The result is a mosaic of small-scale hometowns that make the city both intelligible and approachable. Join local historian John Gurda for a lively, illustrated look at the patterns that have made Milwaukee pre-eminently a city of neighborhoods. A book sale and signing will follow the program.