The first known Chicago Tribune theater review appeared on March 25, 1853. An anonymous notice, it shared the page with two other announcements--one about a pair of thousand-pound hogs set to be slaughtered and another trumpeting the largest load of lumber ever to leave Chicago. "And thus Chicago's priorities were starkly laid out right there on that page," begins Chris Jones in the introduction to this eyewitness cultural history. "Hog butcher...