Introduction. "Chicago has no intelligentsia?": consumer culture and intellectual life reconsidered
Mapping the Black metropolis: a cultural geography of the stroll
Making do: beauty, enterprise, and the "makeover" of race womanhood
Theaters of war: spectacles, amusements, and the emergence of urban film culture
The birth of two nations: White fears, Black jeers, and the rise of a "race film" consciousness
Sacred tastes: the migrant aesthetics and authority of gospel music
The sporting life: recreation, self-reliance, and competing visions of race manhood
Epilogue. The crisis of the Black bourgeoisie, or, What If Harold Cruse had lived in Chicago?