"In the mordern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world." —Margaret Mead, People and Places (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1959)

 The Vanishing World of My Chicago Childhood is a delightful memoir of growing up in Chicago in the 1950s, but it is much more than that. The author argues that childhood has changed dramatically over the last seventy years--and not for the better.

Zucker and his neighborhood pals played games outside almost constantly when the weather permitted: sixteen-inch softball, basketball, touch football, marbles, kick-the-can, and yo-yos were among their favorites. They also constructed their own soapbox cars, built miniature golf courses, chased butterflies, hunted snakes, camped overnight in vacant lots and shot bows-and-arrows. When bad weather forced the kids indoors, they played a wide variety of board games, listened to music and read books. In the modern world, the author observes that children play electronic games on their phones, computers or TVs indoors for hours on end. Consequently, they spend precious little time playing outdoors.

The author notes, though, that the infotainment revolution—and the roots of modern American childhood--began when he was a kid. In the 1950s, Americans families began purchasing television sets in mass. Although he admits that American families (including his family) enjoyed watching television, he believes that the arrival of the TV in the American home ushered in the growing isolation of Americans from one another that has had profound consequences for both children and adults today. Thus, the childhood and the world that Zucker experienced growing up on the South Side of Chicago have today largely vanished.