Download or read book The True and Complete Story of machine Gun Jack McGurn written by Amanda Jayne Parr and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2005 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once described by crime boss Sam Giancana, as the 'archetypal movie star gangster,' 'Machine Gun' Jack McGurn, not only offers a unique insight into the life and mind of the most flamboyant gangster of his time, but also explores his close relationship with crime czar Al Capone and the extraordinary history of Chicago's criminal underworld.
Download or read book Deadly Valentines written by Jeffrey Gusfield and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capturing one of the most outrageous stories of the Capone era, this is the twin biography of a couple who defined the extremes and excesses of the Prohibition Era in America. ";Machine Gun"; Jack McGurn, a babyfaced Sicilian immigrant and Al Capone's chief assassin, and Louise May Rolfe, a beautiful blonde dancer and libertine, paired to represent the epitome of fashion, rebellion, and wild abandon in a decade that shocked and roared. Detailing McGurn's suspected role in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and his sensational alibi, this biography shows how the couple captured the headlines in every newspaper in the country, had their hipster speech copied by Hollywood, and were the spellbinding poster children of the new jazz subculture. More than a look at the joie de vivre of two lovers caught in history's spotlight, this work examines the continuing allure of the Roaring Twenties and the characters who inspired America's love affair with gangster literature and crime cinema.
Download or read book Chicago Assassin written by Richard Shmelter and published by Cumberland House Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city of Chicago led the nation when it came to gangland violence during the Prohibition era. As a result, many infamous, unforgettable personalities became a part of America's criminal history. Chicago Assassin is the story of "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, one of the people responsible for putting much of the roar into the Roaring Twenties. His family immigrated to Chicago from Sicily in 1906, as he grew up in the city's slums and later took up boxing as "Battling" Jack McGurn. After avenging his father's death by killing the three hit men responsible, he came to the attention of Al Capone, who invited him into his organization, known as the Chicago Outfit. There he rose to power and was one of the most feared members Capone's organizations, with more than twenty-five known kills for the mob. "Battling" Jack McGurn became so adept with the Thompson submachine gun that he quickly became known as "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn.
Download or read book Eliot Ness and the Untouchables written by Kenneth Tucker and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lawman Eliot Ness has been transformed into legend by the films and television programs that depicted the war he and his "Untouchables" waged against Al Capone and the mobsters of Prohibition-era Chicago. Published by McFarland in 2000, the first edition of this volume analyzed both Ness the person and Ness the myth. This updated and expanded second edition is enhanced by information gathered through interviews with members of the original casts of the television and film versions of The Untouchables. Also included is new material on the historical Frank Nitti and "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run," along with several gangsters whom Ness never actually encountered except in his media portrayals, among them Mad Dog Coll and Dutch Schultz. The author concludes by evaluating the life and accomplishments of Eliot Ness, and his impact as a cultural icon.
Download or read book Al Capone and the 1933 World s Fair written by William Elliott Hazelgrove and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Al Capone and the 1933 World’s Fair: The End of the Gangster Era in Chicago is a historical look at Chicago during the darkest days of the Great Depression. The story of Chicago fighting the hold that organized crime had on the city to be able to put on The 1933 World's Fair. William Hazelgrove provides the exciting and sprawling history behind the 1933 World's Fair, the last of the golden age. He reveals the story of the six millionaire businessmen, dubbed The Secret Six, who beat Al Capone at his own game, ending the gangster era as prohibition was repealed. The story of an intriguing woman, Sally Rand, who embodied the World's Fair with her own rags to riches story and brought sex into the open. The story of Rufus and Charles Dawes who gave the fair a theme and then found financing in the worst economic times the country had ever experienced. The story of the most corrupt mayor of Chicago, William Thompson, who owed his election to Al Capone; and the mayor who followed him, Anton Cermak, who was murdered months before the fair opened by an assassin many said was hired by Al Capone. But most of all it’s the story about a city fighting for survival in the darkest of times; and a shining light of hope called A Century of Progress.
Download or read book Crossing Over the Line written by David J. Langum and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crossing over the Line describes the folly of the Mann Act of 1910—a United States law which made travel from one state to another by a man and a woman with the intent of committing an immoral act a major crime. Spawned by a national wave of "white slave trade" hysteria, the Act was created by the Congress of the United States as a weapon against forced prostitution. This book is the first history of the Mann Act's often bizarre career, from its passage to the amendment that finally laid it low. In David J. Langum's hands, the story of the Act becomes an entertaining cautionary tale about the folly of legislating private morality. Langum recounts the colorful details of numerous court cases to show how enforcement of the Act mirrored changes in America's social attitudes. Federal prosecutors became masters in the selective use of the Act: against political opponents of the government, like Charlie Chaplin; against individuals who eluded other criminal charges, like the Capone mobster "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn; and against black men, like singer Chuck Berry and boxer Jack Johnson, who dared to consort with white women. The Act engendered a thriving blackmail industry and was used by women like Frank Lloyd Wright's wife to extort favorable divorce settlements. "Crossing over the Line is a work of scholarship as wrought by a civil libertarian, and the text . . . sizzles with the passion of an ardent believer in real liberty under reasonable laws."—Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times
Download or read book Guns and Roses written by Rose Keefe and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2003-09-01 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on information compiled from police and court documents, contemporary news accounts, and interviews with O'Banion's friends and associates, Guns and Roses traces O'Banion's rise from Illinois farm boy to the most powerful gang boss ...
Download or read book Ugly Prey written by Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ugly Prey tells the riveting story of poor Italian immigrant Sabella Nitti, the first woman ever sentenced to hang in Chicago, in 1923, for the alleged murder of her husband. Journalist Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi leads readers through the case, showing how, with no evidence and no witnesses, Nitti was the target of an obsessed deputy sheriff and the victim of a faulty legal system. She was also—to the men who convicted her and reporters fixated on her—ugly. For that unforgiveable crime, the media painted her as a hideous, dirty, and unpredictable immigrant, almost an animal. Featuring two other fascinating women—the ambitious and ruthless journalist who helped demonize Sabella through her reports and the brilliant, beautiful, 23-year-old lawyer who helped humanize her with a jailhouse makeover—Ugly Prey is not just a page-turning courtroom drama but also a thought-provoking look at the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and class within the American justice system.
Download or read book Young Al Capone written by William Balsamo and published by Skyhorse Publishing Inc.. This book was released on 2011-03 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on interviews and never-before-published documents to explore the life of Al Capone in New York from 1899 to 1925, discussing his relationships with mobsters Johnny Torrio and Frankie Yale, events that shaped his criminal career, why he left the city, and other topics.
Download or read book 1929 written by Frederick Turner and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2004-04-21 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1929, the brief, brilliant career of Bix Beiderbecke––self–taught cornetist, pianist, and composer––had already become legend. From the summer of '26 at Hudson Lake, Indiana, when his genius blazed forth with a strange, doomed incandescence, Bix's career tragically reflected the chaotic impulses of a country suddenly awash in wealth, power, and a profound cynicism. Shy, elusive, inarticulate, Bix was beloved by both the raccoon–coated campus crowd and the men who nightly played alongside him. He is still celebrated in a yearly festival in his hometown of Davenport, Iowa.And that is where the novel begins, Davenport and the Bix Fest. Then it travels back in time to focus on the highlights of a meteoric career: a Capone–controlled nightclub in 1926; the grueling cross–country tours with Paul Whiteman's Symphonic Jazz orchestra; the disastrous Whiteman trip to California to make the first all–color talkie musical; the stock market crash of 1929 that finds Bix in an asylum, victim of the era's signature product, bootleg gin; and finally, Bix's dying efforts to combine his piano compositions into a suite that would be the pinnacle of his life's work and his evocation of his time and place.Colored by some of the age's most popular characters––Maurice Ravel, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Clara Bow–– 1929 brilliantly illuminates a period in history, personified in the gifted, compelling, and melancholy figure of Bix Beiderbecke.
Download or read book The St Valentine s Day Massacre written by William J. Helmer and published by Cumberland House Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the St. Valentine's Day Massacre when killers dressed as cops gunned down seven men. While the massacre was commonly thought to be ordered by Al Capone, it was actually the work of group from St. Louis known as the "American Boys." The book examines how law enforcement officials worked not to solve the crime to avoid retaliation by corrupt politicians.
Download or read book Uncle Al Capone written by Deirdre Marie Capone and published by Recaplodge LLC. This book was released on 2010-10-27 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the revised edition, March 2015. The untold story from inside his family. Dramatic, unyielding, and provocative, Uncle Al Capone by Deirdre Marie Capone, Al Capone's grandniece, is a fascinating memoir and engaging biography. This moving, highly readable portrait of the Capone family and its mob trade examines what it has meant to survive the storied legacy of the family's forbearers. As Capone traces the arc of regret and what fuels the Capone myth, she finds redemption and a way to coexist with her legacy. In seventeen chapters with titles like "The Making of the Mafioso," "Trading the Chicago Outfit for the Chicago Cubs," and "The Saint Valentine's Day Truth," Capone outlines organized crime in Chicago and offers vignettes of American history during the early and mid-twentieth century. Using years of research and exhaustive interviews with her aunts, uncles, and cousins, she weaves an engaging anecdotal narrative of what it meant to be a Capone, what it meant to lose her father to suicide, and what it meant to have a mother who lived in constant fear. She offers compelling evidence that Al Capone was specifically targeted for prosecution by law enforcement agencies assisted by the media, which made gross exaggerations of her uncle's exploits and fueled a phenomenon of half-truths and utter falsehoods. From the family's roots in Angri, Italy to the author's ongoing investigations today, this debut offers a comprehensive and moving portrait of an iconic American family and one woman's efforts to make peace with the past.
Download or read book The Wisdom of Al Capone written by William J. Helmer and published by . This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of Al Capone's infamous quotes with gangland crime photographs from Chicago during Prohibition. The author provides a new and revised account of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, photographs and story from a first time ever published location of a secret Al Capone roadhouse, with more history on the `Chicago Typewriter¿ a.k.a. the Thompson submachine gun, Machinegun Jack McGurn and Doctor Reinhart Schwimmer who was the seventh victim in the massacre.
Download or read book Murder City written by Michael Lesy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a portrait of Chicago during the 1920s as it became the murder capital of the United States and analyzes how some of Chicago's leaders participated in the criminal and violent activities of the period.
Download or read book The Mafia written by Al Cimino and published by Arcturus Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mafia began on the small Mediterranean island of Sicily. It grew to become a major political force in Italy, while its tentacles penetrated every aspect of life in the United States. Through drugs, it spread its influence around the world. This is its story.
Download or read book The Lady and Her Monsters written by Roseanne Montillo and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Motillo brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein. Montillo recounts how—at the intersection of the Romantic Age and the Industrial Revolution—Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein was inspired by actual scientists of the period: curious and daring iconoclasts who were obsessed with the inner workings of the human body and how it might be reanimated after death. With true-life tales of grave robbers, ghoulish experiments, and the ultimate in macabre research—human reanimation—The Lady and Her Monsters is a brilliant exploration of the creation of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s horror classic.
Download or read book Ground Zero written by Marc Kelly Smith and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inception and implosion, Chicago’s grit and grandiosity all come together in the finite poetic power of the original Slam igniter, renowned poet Marc Kelly Smith and his retrospect denotation, Ground Zero. A cultural, community, and adversarial figure, Smith has challenged the status quo and raised new questions about an environment in a state of continuous calamity. Smith’s power and influence have inspired celebrated figures who cut their teeth on both the stage and the page under his watchful eye—always speaking in the traditions of Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks. Ground Zero challenges but pays homage to the thousand underbellies of Chicago with Smith’s wicked, cigarette-in-the-beer language: “I ain’t diggin’ no concrete coffin, / No backyard mausoleum / To keep me a pickle sweet aplenty / Plied with sardines and pork sausage wieners / Livin’ out the chance that some bubble-flesh victim / Will come puckered up and scabby lipped / To kiss me in the name of a new mankind.” Ground Zero leaves no doubt. The Slampapi / instigator / visionary / you-may-love-me-or-hate-me-but-my-history-will-always-be-chiseled-in-everything-the-poetry-world-does-next collects a survey of his land and his experience, no matter how beautiful or flawed. This book lets the landmines of imagery and Chicago’s slow and uneasy drawl showcase one of our most original voices.
