The Wicked City

The Wicked City is an account of Chicago’s vice, crime, capitalism, and corruption from Pierre the Mole, who sold whiskey to the Indians, through Jonny Torrio and Al Capone, who bootlegged a Great Lake’s worth of booze during the Roaring Twenties. Chicago’s drive for wealth and power in this fifty-year span are evoked through the spirited accounts of the careers of its leading tycoons—such as Charles Yerkes, Marshall Field, George Pullman, and Big Bill Thompson—and its leading gangsters: the Terrible Gennas, Jim Colosino, Dion O’Banion, Diamond Joe Esposito, Johnny Torrio, and Al Capone. The Chicago portrayed here is raw, real, and vital; its raucousness, lawlessness, ebullience, and greed become poetic.