City of Scoundrels

City of Scoundrels

By Gary Krist
$20.00
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“Gary Krist has crafted a wild and appropriately explosive tale about mayhem, murder, corruption, and paranoia…This taut, hour-by-hour account of twelve days that forever changed the city will thrill history buffs and fiction fans alike.”

Karen Abbott, bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and American Rose

When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into “the Metropolis of the World.” But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose and the city’s highest ambitions were suddenly under attack by the same unbridled energies that had given birth to them in the first place. 
 
It began on a balmy Monday afternoon when a blimp in flames crashed through the roof of a busy downtown bank, incinerating those inside. Within days, a racial incident at a hot, crowded South Side beach spiraled into one of the worst urban riots in American history, followed by a transit strike that paralyzed the city. Then, when it seemed as if things could get no worse, police searching for a six-year-old girl discovered her body in a dark North Side basement.
 
City of Scoundrels captures the tumultuous birth of the modern American city, with all of its light and dark aspects in vivid relief.