Murder City
The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties
22 February 2008
Description
"Vivid, laconic, and crisp. The bodies fall like dominoes, and every word sounds like it was shot from a gun. And as you might expect from Lesy, the photographs are extraordinary." —Luc Sante
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. Just as Lesy’s first book, Wisconsin Death Trip, subverted the accepted notion of the Gay Nineties, so Murder City exposes the dark side of the Jazz Age. Revisiting seventeen Chicago murder cases—including that of Belva and Beulah, two murderesses whose trials inspired the musical Chicago—Lesy's sharp, fearless storytelling makes a compelling case that this collection of criminals may be progenitors of our modern age.
Reviews
"Gripping and horrifying." — Chicago Tribune
"[Has] the archaic strangeness of myth." — The Atlantic
"A magnificent read." — Dayton Daily News
Also By: Michael Lesy 
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Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century, 1900-1910
E Book, 2013
What we ate, how we ate, and how eating changed during America’s first real food revolution, 1900–1910.
Long Time Coming: A Photographic Portrait of America, 1935-1943
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Over 400 rarely or never-seen photographs of a vanished America.
