As Democrats Gather in Chicago, These Audiobooks Offer Context

Never one to tread lightly, Norman Mailer once declared Chicago “the great American city.” It did not strive, he argued, to New York’s global status, yet it managed to outshine “the dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis,” as Mailer derided Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

The Brooklyn-bred literary pugilist made this pronouncement in 1968 as he blew into town for that summer’s Democratic National Convention. Mailer had just been in Miami, where the Republicans trotted out a baby elephant and nominated Richard M. Nixon without much drama.

In Chicago, the circus was of a darker variety. Having drawn the nation into a full-scale war in Vietnam, Lyndon B. Johnson announced in March that he would not seek re-election. Less than a week later, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. Then, in early June, Robert F. Kennedy, the Democratic front-runner, was assassinated in Los Angeles. Just a few weeks later, the Democrats headed to Chicago while the country convulsed with grief and rage. Antiwar activists planned a show of force in the city’s streets, only to be met by an unrestrained Chicago Police Department. The ensuing violence played out on millions of television screens, stunning an already battered nation.

This year, the Democrats are gathering in Chicago again, for the second time since 1968. Chicago has changed, and so has America. Yet there are haunting parallels — ideological divisions, antiwar protests, a recent assassination attempt. These audiobooks can help you make sense of the current moment.

The 1968 Democratic convention was supposed to showcase how Mayor Richard J. Daley had turned Chicago into “the city that works.” But as the event devolved into what would later be described as a