City Tales: Chicago

Submitted by Amber on March 15, 2011 - 12:15pm
in
sin in the second city

Did you know that the nickname the "Windy City" is derived not from the city's weather, but from the reputation of politicians in the late 1800s to boast about the city?

This nickname came into play as Chicago and New York were vying to be named host to the 1893 World’s Fair. Ultimately, Chicago won the honor and thus we have the strange and fascinating tale, Devil in the White City.

Currently engrossed with Erik Larson’s fantastic story, I have discovered two additional strange but true tales about Chi-Town to add to my reading list:

I can't wait to devour Karen Abbott’s novel about the Everleigh Club, the infamous Chicago brothel run by two sisters at the beginning of the 20th century. Names such as Rockefeller, Barrymore and Capone show up in these pages and the print version has pictures!

I love reading about my favorite cities, of which Chicago is one, and I especially enjoy books set in these cities during the Jazz Age so I’m eager to discover the dark side of Chicago’s history in this tale from Michael Lesy.

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Comment Guidelines
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image. Ignore spaces and be careful about upper and lower case.