Remembering Chicago: Crime in the Capone Era
With a selection of fine historic images from his best-selling book Historic Photos of Chicago Crime: The Capone Era, John Russick provides a valuable and revealing historical retrospective on Chicago’s gangster era.
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. Remembering Chicago: Crime in 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. Complete with insightful captions by historian John Russick, these photos offer a unique view into Chicago and its nefarious past.
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Book details
- Imprint
- Turner Publishing Company
- Formats
- Paperback
- Subjects
- History › United States › State & Local › West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)
History › United States › State & Local › Southwest (AZ, NM, OK, TX) - Topics
- Chicago history · Al Capone · Prohibition era · organized crime · gangsters · historic photography · Jazz Age · 1920s America
- ISBN-13
- 9781683368168
About the author
JOHN RUSSICK is a historian and Senior Vice President at the Chicago History Museum, where he oversees exhibitions, education, collections, and curatorial affairs. His books include Connecting Kids to History with Museum Exhibitions and Historic Photos of Chicago Crime: The Capone Era.
Russick’s Chicago 00 Project received a MUSE award in 2018 and a Chicago Innovation award in 2019. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Northern Illinois and a Master of Science in Architecture, with a specialization in historic preservation, from the University of Texas at Austin.
When not writing, Russick works as a consultant on documentary projects, including the 2011 Ken Burns film Prohibition. His expertise in Chicago architecture, Prohibition, and the Great Chicago Fire shapes his research and publications.
John lives in Chicago.