This book revises the picture of the glittering Chicago of impressive mansions and museums; it exposes the city's corrupt underbelly and the realities of life in an age which is often assumed to have been simpler and more moral than ours. Includes chapters on the Haymarket riot, the gamblers' wars, the notorious levee red-light district and institutionalized graft.
... lively anecdotes of the social elite, the powerful gamblers, criminals and corrupt boodling politicians. —Publishers Weekly
Mr. Lindberg... has done a prodigious amount of research and has come up with a host of new and delicious details. —Chicago Sun-Times
Richard C. Lindberg grew up in Chicago's Norwood Park neighborhood. His nine books include Chicago by Gaslight: A History of the Chicago Netherworld, 1880-I 920, The White Sox Encyclopedia, and The Armchair Companion to chicago Sports. He is the former editor of the Illinois Police and Sheriff's News and served as head writer and senior editor for the Edgar Award-winning Encyclopedia of World Crime.