Historic Photos of Chicago Crime: The Capone Era

by John Russick (Text by)

Overview

Perhaps no city has a more fabled past than Chicago, home of legendary Al Capone. But that fabled past is often portrayed separate from the surrounding web of social realities, without which no event, no period in time can be understood.

Historic Photos of Chicago Crime: The Capone Era addresses this problem by opening with a compelling look at Chicago's cityscape to include a broad range of cultural phenomena—from suffrage to jazz—essential to the contextualization of crime in the 1920s and 1930s. The history then proceeds as its title suggests—to a riveting overview of crime in Chicago, chock-full of images documenting notorious gangsters and gruesome gangland wars. Al Capone, John Torrio, Earl "Hymie" Weiss, George "Bugs" Moran, and a host of others are all here. Replete with insightful captions and penetrating chapter introductions by historian John Russick, these photos offer a unique view into Chicago and its nefarious past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781618586117
Publisher:	Turner Publishing Company
Publication date:	11/01/2007
Series:	Historic Photos
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	220
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

John Russick is a museum curator with twenty years of experience in a variety of institutions, including Chicago s Field Museum and the Smithsonian Institution s National Museum of American History. In 1998, he joined the staff of the Chicago History Museum and has since led the development of eight major exhibitions, including That s Good News! Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music; Fashion, Flappers 'n' All That Jazz; Leopold and Loeb: The Perfect Crime; and Sensing Chicago, which was recognized in the American Association of Museums Excellence in Exhibition Competition, 2007. Most recently, he served as the lead curator for Mapping Chicago: The Past and the Possible. He holds degrees in history and architecture from Northern Illinois University and the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood with his wife and two children, within a few miles of where his father, grandparents, and great-grandparents lived.

Editorial Reviews

Historic Photos of Chicago Crime: The Capone Era opens with a compelling look at Chicago's cityscape to include a broad range of cultural phenomena, from suffrage to jazz, essential to the contextualization of crime in the 1920s and 1930s. The history then proceeds as its title suggests, to a riveting overview of crime in Chicago, chock-full of images documenting notorious gangsters and gruesome gangland wars. Al Capone, John Torrio, Earl "Hymie" Weiss, George "Bugs" Moran, and a host of others are all here. Replete with insightful captions and penetrating chapter introductions by historian John Russick, these photos offer a unique view into Chicago and its nefarious past.

The Chicago Syndicate

The operative word in the title of this stunning book of photographs is "era". The emphasis is on the milieu of Chicago in gangland days. As such, there is something for everyone in this 200-page coffee table quality book. Of course, there are the requisite bloody cadavers, gun toting hoodlums and getaway cars, with the courtroom shots, the funerals, and beer busts. But the top-notch photographs taken with the big old press cameras of the period reproduce details that bring the 1920s and '30s to life-everything from the pens on a desk, cigar bands, facial expressions in a crowd. We take for granted this kind of depth of field with today's high-quality digital cameras; but it is remarkable that the average news photographer was able to get these crisp pictures 80 years ago . . . If the economy and gas prices are keeping you close to home for vacation this summer, journey to another era through this book. You might want to purchase a spare to hold-over for a holiday gift to shorten someone's Chicago winter.

Windy City Times

This stunning coffee-table book of B&W photographs of Chicago's Capone era has some great shots. I think my favorite is the one of the Birger Gang, a cheerful group of bootleggers posed on and around a car and holding a wide variety of firearms, including pistols, rifles, and Tommy guns, though there are many others of equal interest. Gangsters, both alive and dead (the St. Valentine's Day Massacre is of course represented), cops, molls (Hymie Weiss' widow looks pretty happy about things), Feds, old buildings, sporting events. All of them are captured in fine and sometimes surprising detail. There's just enough text by John Russick, from Chicago's History Museum, to let you know what each picture's about, but for the most part the photos speak for themselves. This kind of book is wonderful for browsing, and it's the kind of thing you'll find yourself returning to often.

Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine