The History Press [new releases]

Name: Gangsters and Organized Crime in Jewish Chicago
Brand: Alex Garel-Frantzen
SKU: 9781626191938
Price: 21.99 USD
Availability: InStock

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Gangsters and Organized Crime in Jewish Chicago

$21.99

Rockford's Forgotten Driving Park

$21.99

Arlington Heights, Illinois

$21.99

When Hollywood Landed at Chicago's Midway Airport:

$21.99

African Americans in Glencoe

$21.99

Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois

$21.99

Lost Airports of Chicago

$21.99

Lincoln's Old Friends of Menard County, Illinois

$14.99

The Chicago Haymarket Affair: A Guide to a Labor Rights Milestone

$21.99

Haunted Bachelors Grove

$21.99

On This Day in Chicago History

Exploring Chicago Blues

$19.99

Effingham County:

$21.99

Fire Strikes the Chicago Stock Yards

$21.99

Forgotten Chicago Airfields

$21.99

Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's North Side

$21.99

The Bloomington-Normal Circus Legacy: The Golden Age of Aerialists

$21.99

Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's West Side

$21.99

Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's South Side

$21.99

Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts

$21.99

Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Downtown

$21.99

The Boys in Chicago Heights: The Forgotten Crew of the Chicago Outfit

$21.99

Boone County Originals:

$21.99

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Gangsters and Organized Crime in Jewish Chicago

9781626191938

$21.99

Al Capone. The Untouchables. The Valentine's Day massacre. You may think you know everything about the Roaring Twenties in the Windy City, but in the early twentieth century, the harsh environment of the Maxwell Street ghetto produced a proliferation of Jewish gangsters involved in everything from labor racketeering to white slavery. Their illegal activity offended their own community's value system and sparked rifts between Reform and Orthodox Jews. It also ignited tensions between city officials and Jewish leaders, indelibly marked the gentile population's perception of Chicago's Jews and shaped the city's West Side for years to come.

Rockford's Forgotten Driving Park

9781467141963

$21.99

Local thrill-seekers at the turn of the century knew that all the action was at the Driving Park. But few today know the drama buried beneath a West End subdivision. At the height of the horse racing craze after the Civil War, prominent Rockford businessmen raised $25,000 to build a harness racetrack there in 1890 (the name refers to the person in the cart pulled by a horse--the driver). The versatile venue evolved to stay relevant, weathering the 1893 financial panic and welcoming bicycle mania. Events ranged from high school track meets to early auto racing. Folks saw a soccer game one week and a circus the next. Controversy erupted at times, from gambling and drinking to a murder and a KKK rally. Amanda Becker reveals this colorful story nearly forgotten since 1938.

Arlington Heights, Illinois

9781596296749

$21.99

The village of Arlington Heights--beginning with the diligence and fortitude of William Dunton--is replete with stories of bitter hardship and exalting triumph. Originally named Dunton after its founder, the village's success was sealed by canny deal-making that brought a railroad through the middle of town. As the state of Illinois boomed, the village on the tracks flourished with agriculture, industry, transportation and an expanding population. From the influx of immigrants and industry to the resurrection of the Arlington Park Racetrack, read the compelling history of a small agricultural village's transformation into a thriving commercial district and the unique way in which its small-town charm and industrious spirit coexist.

When Hollywood Landed at Chicago's Midway Airport:

9781609495923

$21.99

Al Capone dove for the floor when he saw the flash of the camera, while his startled body guards drew their guns. The actress Miriam Hopkins ran screaming from the camera while Lyndon Johnson ran towards it. General Jimmy Doolittle called him a Son of a Bitch, while the Pope called him his friend. Bob Hope asked if he would escort Hope's wife to church, and John Barrymore asked if he would hide him from his mistress. Cary Grant demanded a shoe shine, Eleanor Roosevelt demanded an apology, and Harry Truman demanded a bourbon. Who was this guy? He was Mike Rotunno, and he was a photographer for one of Chicago's newspapers. Yet, he also photographed airplanes for the airlines, starting in the 1920's, the beginning of his 50 year career at Chicago's Midway airport. In that span he got to know everyone, great or small, and his story is like a cross between the movie The Terminal" and "Forrest Gump." He introduced movie stars to baseball players, Marilyn Monroe to a room full o."

African Americans in Glencoe

9781596298149

$21.99

The village of Glencoe has a proud history of early African American settlement. In recent years, however, this once thriving African American community has begun to disperse. Robert Sideman, a thirty-year Glencoe resident, relates this North Shore suburb's African American history through fond remembrances of Glencoe communities such as the St. Paul AME Church, as well as recounting the lives of prominent African Americans. At the same time, Sideman poses a difficult question: how can the village maintain its diverse heritage throughout changing times? African Americans in Glencoe reveals an uplifting history while challenging residents to embrace a past in danger of being lost.

Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois

9781609493288

$21.99

Southwestern Illinois played a fierce and pivotal role in the national drama of a house divided against itself. St. Clair County sheltered Brooklyn, founded by freed and fugitive slaves and a vital link on the Underground Railroad. Alton was the home of Elijah Lovejoy, gunned down defending his press from an anti-abolitionist mob, as well as Lyman Trumbull, who wrote the Thirteenth Amendment. After the outbreak of war, Alton's prison was packed with thousands of Confederate captives, a smallpox epidemic and the cross-dressing double agent Mary Anne Pitman. John J. Dunphy continues the story of the Civil War and abolitionism beyond the Emancipation Proclamation and Appomattox, seeking out the enduring legacy those struggles left in his corner of Illinois.

Lost Airports of Chicago

9781609499006

$21.99

To book a ride on the "World's Shortest Airline" or learn aerial stunts from the redheaded widow of Lawrence Avenue, you've got to go through the airports buried beneath the housing developments and shopping malls of Chicagoland. Many of these airports sprang up after World War I, when training killed more pilots than combat, and the aviation pioneers who developed Chicago's flying fields played a critical role in getting the nation ready to dare the skies in World War II. Author Nick Selig has rolled wheels on his fair share of Chicago's landing strips but faces an entirely new challenge in touching down in places being swallowed by a city and forgotten by history.

Lincoln's Old Friends of Menard County, Illinois

9781609497972

$14.99

At the age of twenty-two, Abraham Lincoln arrived in New Salem, Illinois, as a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy" (in his own words). He did not remain friendless for long. Meet the community that welcomed him: Bennett and Elizabeth Abell, the couple who guided him through heartache; Mary Owens, Elizabeth Abell's sister who helped educate him in the realm of the heart; Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster who helped teach him; Bowling Green, the jolly justice of the peace who allowed Lincoln to practice law before his court; and Slicky Bill Greene, who clerked with Lincoln at a frontier dry goods store. Making good use of primary sources overlooked by many historians, Dale Thomas helps flesh out the important story of Lincoln's formative years in Menard County."

The Chicago Haymarket Affair: A Guide to a Labor Rights Milestone

9781467135740

$21.99

On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded during a labor demonstration near Haymarket Square. The ensuing gunfire and chaos brought a grisly end to what began as peaceful support for an eight-hour workday and led to the trial and execution of rally organizers. The incident also drew irrevocable attention to a conversation about workers" rights and the role of law enforcement that continues today. In this guide to the key moments and sites of one of Chicago's most confusing and chaotic events, author Joseph Anthony Rulli aims to establish a clearer understanding of its historical significance.

Haunted Bachelors Grove

9781467136631

$21.99

Slumbering beneath a shroud of deep forest and deliberate secrecy, Bachelors Grove Cemetery still exerts a powerful pull on paranormal pilgrims and curiosity-seekers around the world.

Shielding the orphaned burial ground from ritual and idle vandalism has also buried the rich history of this magical place. Still, its eerie presence has dominated the folklore of the southwest side of Chicago for every generation since 1838. Brave the woods with Ursula Bielski to unearth decades of mysteries and myriad ghost stories, from the Magic House to the Madonna of Bachelor's Grove.

On This Day in Chicago History

9781626192539

$14.99

Join John R. Schmidt on a day-by-day look at some of Chicago's most fascinating lesser-known events.

Think you know Chicago? If you are thinking of Al Capone, the L, the Cubs, Barack Obama or the Great Fire of 1871, then you are remembering the highlights from the tour bus. Here's the rest of the story, day by day. Chicago opened the first blood bank, invented the vacuum cleaner and sent a bowling ball around the world. One high school football game drew 120,000 people. Chicagoans fought nineteen years over the name of a street. For fifty years, they saved a gallows for an escaped killer. And those are just some of the stories...

Oak Park

9781609490706

$24.99

Journey to the past with historian David M. Sokol as he reveals the city that nurtured and inspired the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Ray Kroc and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Though it is a handsome village, with stately trees and often-generous lawns, Oak Park has neither major waterways nor dramatic vistas. But it is rich in figures of historical importance such as Ernest Hemingway, Doris Humphrey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Percy Julian, Ray Kroc, and William Barton. It is also blessed with the world's largest concentration of Prairie School buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his followers. The Oak Park community has nurtured such innovation with one hand while fiercely holding on to its own identity with the other, negotiating its relationship with Chicago and facing down a century and a half of constantly-shifting challenges.

Nick Blase:

9781609495497

$23.99

Nick Blase ruled the Chicago suburb of Niles for almost half a century, defeating every challenger and even facing down legendary Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley on occasion. Ultimately, Blase, the longest-sitting mayor in the country, resigned from office following an arrest on federal corruption charges the morning of his seventy-eighth birthday. He pled guilty and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Despite the cloud over his tenure, there is no doubt Blase made a huge impact on the sleepy suburb, turning the postwar bedroom community into an economic powerhouse that ranked with the largest cities in the state. After exhaustive research and hours of personal interviews, Andrew Schneider has put together a fascinating portrait of Blase's political career.

Carson's:

9781609497347

$21.99

Carson Pirie Scott and Company always enjoyed a sterling reputation in Chicago, even among the merchant princes of State Street. For more than one hundred years, in architect Louis Sullivan's stunning commercial masterpiece, Carson's stood shoulder to shoulder with retail icon Marshall Field's, establishing itself as an anchor of contemporary style. It was a place that brought the world to the Midwest, from Parisian fashion to the authentic ambiance of the Mediterrenea dance numbers and the Santa's Village displays. Relive the friendly shopping experience that has kept the Carson's name alive for over a century and a half.

Exploring Chicago Blues

9781626193222

$19.99

Blues history is steeped in Chicago's sidewalks; it floats out of its restaurants, airport lounges and department stores.

It is a fundamental part of the city's heritage that every resident should know and every visitor should be afraid to miss. Allow Rosalind Cummings-Yeates to take you inside the Checkerboard and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. Continue on to explore the contemporary blues scene and discover the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago.

Effingham County:

9781596299658

$21.99

Those who have halted their treks down the National Road in Effingham County form a diverse band of characters, from Joseph Boleyjack, known as the "parched corn, summer preacher," to polished orators like William Jennings Bryan, who continued exhorting enthusiastic Effingham crowds as his train pulled away. Donaldson traces this story back to before this land was known as Effingham, to the burial mounds of the Kickapoo. He presses on through the challenges the county's determined inhabitants faced in the twentieth century, from the horrors witnessed abroad in the world wars to those faced at home during the Great Depression and in the tragic St. Anthony's Hospital fire. His obvious passion for the county's past is sure to strike a spark with lifelong residents and new arrivals alike.

Fire Strikes the Chicago Stock Yards

9781609499075

$21.99

Wade into the endless smoke of Chicago's Union Stock Yards, the site of nearly three hundred extra-alarm fires before its closure in 1971, including some of the most disastrous conflagrations of a city famous for fire. In 1910, twenty-one firemen and three civilians were killed in a blaze at a beef warehouse--the largest death toll for an organized fire department in the nation prior to 9/11. The meatpackers who ran the yards considered the constant threat of fire as part of the cost of doing business, shrugging it off with an, "It's all right, we're fully covered." For the firefighters who were forced to plunge into the flames again and again, it was an entirely different matter.

Forgotten Chicago Airfields

9781626195547

$21.99

Nick Selig excavates the highways to the sky that have been covered up by urban sprawl or dissolved by neglect. More than a guide to landing strips that have had startling second lives as shopping malls or retirement homes, he uncovers the excitement of the early days of air travel, when a man might cling to his job as a lavatory truck driver for a closer peek at aviation. In this follow-up to Lost Airports of Chicago," discover how a tractor swap gave birth to Clow International Airport and revel in the daredevil exploits of puddle-jumper pilots over the wide-open spaces of Harlem Avenue."

Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's North Side

9781596296442

$21.99

In 1929, Chicago gangster Al Capone arranged a special St. Valentine's Day delivery for his favorite arch enemies: a massacre. Seven North Side mobsters were left dead. Yet random killings and bizarre murders were not unfamiliar in Chicago. Tales of the city's most violent and puzzling murders make this gripping work truly hair-raising: a deranged stalker kills his love object and then himself; a sausage maker uses the tools of his trade to rid himself of his wife; and a meticulous serial killer cleans his dead victim's wounds before taping them closed. Through accounts dripping with mystery, gory details and suspense, Troy Taylor brilliantly tells the twisted history of Chicago's North Side's worst.

The Bloomington-Normal Circus Legacy: The Golden Age of Aerialists

9781609497101

$21.99

Starting in the 1870s, the barns, icehouses, gymnasiums and empty theaters of central Illinois provided the practice sites for aerial performers whose names still command reverence in the annals of American circus history. Meet Fred Miltimore and the Green Brothers, runaways from the Fourth Ward School who became the first Bloomington-born flyers. Watch Art Concello, a ten-year-old truant, become first a world-class flyer, then a famous trapeze impresario and finally Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus's most successful general manager. The entire art of the trapeze--instruction, training, performance and management--became a Bloomington-Normal industry during the tented shows' golden age, when finding a circus flying act without a connection to this area would have been virtually impossible.

Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's West Side

9781596296930

$21.99

Blazing from the West Side, the Great Chicago Fire left nothing but ashy remnants of the developing city, leveling its landscape but certainly not its spirit. While the West Side was home to the infamous O'Leary barn, it was also where news of some of the city's most gruesome and horrific crimes reverberated throughout the state and across the country. Read about the bloody end of Roger The Terrible"? Touhy, who, although he undoubtedly lived up to his name, met an ill-deserved fate. Troy Taylor also delves into the life of John Wayne Gacy, the depraved man masked by the clown costume, and yet again proves to be a master storyteller and historian of Chicago's criminal underworld."

Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's South Side

9781596296978

$21.99

Lurking below the Loop, behind the industry-driven energy of Chicago, lies the mysterious criminal underworld of the South Side. Recounting criminal exploits of legends like Alphonse Capone, as well as lesser-known stories like the Car Barn Bandits, Troy Taylor captures the intricacies of the most infamous stories of Chicago's South Side. From the gruesome murders committed by the unassuming H.H. Holmes to the mysterious death of Marshall Field Jr., join Taylor as he revisits the South Side's prosperous middle-class days and vividly depicts the strange and horrific crimes that have cast new light on the character of these too often overlooked neighborhoods.

Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts

9781596296923

$21.99

From the very beginning, Chicago thrived on its reputation as a wide-open town. After the Great Fire, no part of the city was rebuilt more quickly than the vice districts, where bribed cops and brutal force emboldened professional wickedness to celebrate itself with gala events like the First Ward Ball, begun in honor of a madam's pianist and often so crowded that passed-out drunks couldn't even fall to the floor. Randolph Street was nicknamed Gambler's Row because men gambled with their lives by visiting it. In Little Hell, guns and knives could be rented by the hour. In these seedy areas only put to sleep by Mickey Finn's knockout drinks or Gentle Annie's knockout punches, it is no wonder that Detective Woolridge kept seventy-five disguises, made twenty thousand arrests and was shot at forty-four times.

Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Downtown

9781596296947

$21.99

In the company of author Troy Taylor, pull off the trick of coming back alive from some of Chicago's most infamous one-way rides." Meet the deadly womanizer Johann Hoch, who would propose to a woman within twenty minutes of meeting her and then poison her within a week. Follow "Terrible" Tommy O'Conner as he eluded the gallows for more than fifty years, until the city finally grew "tired of waiting" and dismantled them for the final time. Learn how even flower shops and cathedrals weren't safe from gangland violence, and relive the tragic fire at the Iroquois Theatre, where a "fireproof" curtain was made of cotton and did little to stop the blaze that killed more people than the Great Fire of 1871."

The Boys in Chicago Heights: The Forgotten Crew of the Chicago Outfit

9781609497330

$21.99

Chicago Heights was long the seat of one of the major street crews of the Chicago Outfit, but its importance has often been overlooked and misunderstood.

The crew's origins predate Prohibition, when Chicago Heights was a developing manufacturing center with a large Italian immigrant population. Its earliest bosses struggled for control until a violent gang war left the crew solidified under the auspices of Al Capone. For the remainder of the twentieth century, the boys from Chicago Heights generated large streams of revenue for the Outfit through its vast gambling enterprises, union infiltration and stolen auto rackets. For the first time, the history of the Chicago Heights street crew is traced from its inception through its last known boss.

Boone County Originals:

9781596299382

$21.99

Daniel Boone may never have set foot in the Illinois county that bears his name, but his tradition of blazing new trails is certainly honored here. Boone County has been the home of Native American legends, a Major League Baseball player, a Miss America and a cross-dressing Civil War soldier. And don't forget Hairbreadth Harry, King of the Hobos, "? who wrote poetry, walked backward and bathed in gasoline. Enjoy the best of Mike Doyle's historical columns as he introduces the fascinating folk of this "garden on the prairie, "? where some of the tallest tales are true."