James Grossman is Vice President for Research and Education at the Newberry Library, and Senior Research Associate in the Department of History at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and has taught at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (1989) and A Chance to Make Good: African-Americans, 1900-1929 (1997).  He was project director and coeditor of The Encyclopedia of Chicago (with Janice L. Reiff and Ann Durkin Keating, 2004), and coeditor (with Janice L. Reiff and Ann Durkin Keating) of The Encyclopedia of Chicago Online. He also is the editor of The Frontier in American Culture (1994) and coeditor of the Univ. of Chicago Press series Historical Studies of Urban America (22 vols. 1992- ). His articles and short essays have focused on various aspects of American urban history, African American history, American ethnicity, and higher education. His book reviews have appeared in the Chicago Tribune and New York Newsday in addition to various academic journals. A regular participant in the Chicago Humanities Festival, he has also spoken at the Printers Row Book Fair, and a wide variety of universities and cultural institutions locally and nationwide. He has also appeared frequently on Chicago radio, both public and commercial.