Chicago By Gaslight: A HISTORY OF CHICAGO'S NETHERWORLD: 1880 [Paperback]

Richard Lindberg LINDBERG (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers (August 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0897334213
• ISBN-13: 978-0897334211
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #920,943 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Chicago's Dark Underbelly circa 1900, November 18, 2004

By 

Owen Keehnen (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chicago By Gaslight: A HISTORY OF CHICAGO'S NETHERWORLD: 1880 (Paperback)

This is a well documented expose on the underbelly of Chicago, that 'big shouldered' metropolis. Deliciously lurid, fascinating and infuriating accounts of the birth of the labor and socialist movements, lots of police and political scandal and corruption, murder and mayhem - including a gruesome chapter on the notorious HH Holmes, racial tensions, assorted vice (drugs, prostitution, gambling) and a whole lot more. Lots of colorful pre-Capone thugs and characters.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable and Informative, January 30, 2004

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chicago By Gaslight: A HISTORY OF CHICAGO'S NETHERWORLD: 1880 (Paperback)

Richard Lindberg has written one of the best resouces available and comes highly recommended. I bought this book as research material for a novel and found it extremely helpful. A valuable and informative guide for anyone interested in this fascinating period in Chicago's history.

5.0 out of 5 stars An Illuminating Account of Chicago Before Electricity, January 19, 2008

By 

Borowy26 "Hank" (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Chicago By Gaslight: A HISTORY OF CHICAGO'S NETHERWORLD: 1880 (Paperback)

Often imitated, seldom duplicated, Richard Lindberg is a remarkable Chicago historian. If you doubt the accuracy of the last statement, I challenge you to check the acknowledgments, bibliographies and footnotes of many historical and true crime books written by other authors during the past two decades. You will constantly see citations to Lindberg's previously published works. If you read the prefaces, you will find that other authors often extend their thanks to Lindberg for his cooperation and encouragement. While it is possible that a book may have been published on Chicago history or true crime during the last twenty years that does not refer to Lindberg, I would immediately question how reputable such a book or its author might be! Sadly, there are some unscrupulous writers do not wish to acknowledge their unpaid debts to others.

Those authors who have chosen to consult Lindberg's publications have done so for good reasons. He has resurrected many half forgotten and obscure accounts of Chicago's past and oftentimes uncovered new facts dismissed or neglected by the contemporary historians, crime investigators and reporters who actually visited the scenes! Many of the crimes and scandals described in this book have been largely erased from public memory. The buildings have been demolished, the streets renamed and the surviving ancestors of the participants scattered to parts unknown, possibly living under assumed names.

I particularly enjoyed "Chicago by Gaslight: A History of Chicago's Netherworld, 1880-1920." For those of you who frequent secondhand bookstores, the book was originally published under a different title, "Chicago Ragtime, Another Look at Chicago, 1880-1920." I found the book to be satisfying because I was able to appreciate it on two different levels: firstly, because it is engrossing nonfiction writing that resulted from solid scholarship and, secondly, because it also served to reacquaint me with Rich Lindberg and his writings on topics unrelated to professional sports.

As a personal aside, I first met Rich Lindberg at Northeastern Illinois University, where we both were graduate students, albeit in different graduating classes. While I was aware of the fact that he was studying the Chicago Police Department for his history thesis paper, I chiefly regarded him as being the avid sports fan (he eventually became the official team historian of the Chicago White Sox). "Chicago by Gaslight" was the first of his book titles that I read that had did not concern major league baseball.

This book enlarged my own knowledge of Chicago history. Many of the genteel histories compiled about Chicago's formative years and published during the Gilded Age omitted the impolite and unsavory details about criminal and political activities (the two categories are not mutually exclusive) that did not occur amongst the industrialist millionaires, meatpackers and philanthropists residing in mansions on Prairie Avenue. Yes, there were a few antiquated books that were somewhat more candid, but most of these had long since fallen out of print and the surviving copies were not available for circulation in most libraries. Despite the fact that I was familiar with the settlement of the city and its growth as an urban manufacturing center and transportation hub this book taught me new things and increased my appreciation and understanding of those things that I already knew by providing greater context and detail to the events.

Prohibition was always of great interest to me, but as far as most true crime writing goes, the rise of Al Capone during the Roaring Twenties has been repeatedly covered in numerous books, some good, some bad and many completely erroneous, almost to the exclusion of anything else written about Chicago's past. Lindberg's singular achievement in this book is that he amply demonstrates that widespread criminality, gaming, political corruption and vice in Chicago did not originate with the passage of the Volstead Act. In fact, the longstanding antagonism between the Drys and the Wets preceded the enactment of Eighteenth Amendment by almost seventy years. Given the fact that organized gambling and vice had been so firmly established in Chicago, it seemed inevitable that Prohibition was bound to spell trouble in a metropolis where Sunday closing ordinances for taverns had proven to be largely unenforceable for decades under all types of mayors, reformers and scalawags alike. The Drys may have held the upper hand in terms of wealth, prestige, societal influence and open access to elected officials in the corridors of the state legislature and the federal Congress, but the disenfranchised Wets had superior numbers and they were determined to slake their thirst.

Unlike some of his Nineteenth Century predecessors, Lindberg adhered to accepted historiographical techniques in his writings, relying upon solid evidence rather than gossip and hearsay and to the extent possible he always attempted to cite his sources. This book deserves a wider audience of local readers. Imagine how many totally indifferent Chicago students might have earned good grades in Social Studies if the such a book was chosen as a textbook! Highly recommended.