Maybe it's the same in other cities our size, but it seems that books digging deep into Milwaukee's history are few and far between.

Sure, there have been many over the years, but they don't come often and for every really in-depth investigation there are a few that while fun and interesting -- like photo books and postcard collections -- don't really get at the heart of who we really are (and who our predecessors were).

Thankfully, there are exceptions. Of course, John Gurda's landmark in 1999 "The Making of Milwaukee," written and published to celebrate the city's 150th anniversary springs to mind.

So do monographs like Diane Vecchio's "Merchants, Midwives and Laboring Women," published in 2006 and Joe William Trotter Jr.'s "Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45," from 1985.

Both titles -- seemingly unlikely as it is -- were published by the University of Illinois Press, which also brings us the "Perspectives on Milwaukee's Past," a collection of essays edited by Margo Anderson and Victor Greene, both of whom are social historians at UW-Milwaukee.

Based on papers presented at the second Biennial Meeting of the Urban History Association in Milwaukee in 2004, this paperback collects 10 engaging works focusing on politics, labor, gender, ethnicity, religion and urban landscape.

The roughly 350-page book ($30 in paperback, $75 in cloth) is divided into three sections.

In the first, "Politics and Work," UWM history instructor Aims McGuinness explores Milwaukee's brand of socialism, UW-Parkside's John Buenker tracks political parties from 1840 to the present and Minnesota's Eric Fure-Slocum serves up an essay of labor and urban democracy.

In "The Peoples of Milwaukee," papers focus on writing the history of Germans in the city, African Americans and civil rights here, the experiences of Latinos and Asians in Milwaukee and the absence of women in the written history of Brew City.

Section III, "Institutions and Culture," is perhaps the most engaging to the general reader. Judith T. Kenny and Thomas C. Hubka offer two pictures taken a century apart on Pulaski Street and use them to illustrate the ways in which the urban landscape has changed -- and has not changed -- over the years.

Marquette professor Steven M. Avella traces the way religion affected the development of Milwaukee and Greene himself -- who many years ago authored a fabulous book on ethnic music in America -- serves up "Dealing with Diversity: Milwaukee's Multiethnic Festivals and Urban Identity, 1840-1940," which is a major highlight here.

With such wide-ranging and engaging scholarship focused on Milwaukee, we can only hope that Anderson, Greene and University of Illinois Press have more of the same up their collective sleeve.