num_pages: 344
description: Michael Lesy's portrait of a gruesome era could be fiction but it's not. "Things began as they usually did: Someone shot someone else." So begins a chapter of Michael Lesy's disturbingly satisfying account of Chicago in the 1920s, the epicenter of murder in America. A city where daily newspapers fell over each other to cover the latest mayhem. A city where professionals and amateurs alike snuffed one another out, and often for the most banal of reasons, such as wanting a Packard twin-six. Men killing men, men killing women, women killing mencrimes of loot and love. Just as Lesy's first book, Wisconsin Death Trip , subverted the accepted notion of the Gay Nineties, so Murder City gives us the dark side of the Jazz Age. Lesy's sharp, fearless storytelling makes a compelling case that this collection of criminals may be the progenitors of our modern age. 60 illustrations
language: English
title: Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties
titlecomplete: Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties
genres: Historical, Crime, American History, Nonfiction, True Crime, History
ratings_count: 240
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company