Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul [Paperback]

Karen Abbott (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Freelance journalist Abbott's vibrant first book probes the titillating milieu of the posh, world-famous Everleigh Club brothel that operated from 1900 to 1911 on Chicago's Near South Side. The madams, Ada and Minna Everleigh, were sisters whose shifting identities had them as traveling actors, Edgar Allan Poe's relatives, Kentucky debutantes fleeing violent husbands and daughters of a once-wealthy Virginia lawyer crushed by the Civil War. While lesser whorehouses specialized in deflowering virgins, beatings and bondage, the Everleighs spoiled their whores with couture gowns, gourmet meals and extraordinary salaries. The bordello—which boasted three stringed orchestras and a room of 1,000 mirrors—attracted such patrons as Theodore Dreiser, John Barrymore and Prussian Prince Henry. But the successful cathouse was implicated in the 1905 shooting of department store heir Marshall Field Jr. and inevitably became the target of rivals and reformers alike. Madam Vic Shaw tried to frame the Everleighs for a millionaire playboy's drug overdose, Rev. Ernest Bell preached nightly outside the club and ambitious Chicago state's attorney Clifford Roe built his career on the promise of obliterating white slavery. With colorful characters, this is an entertaining, well-researched slice of Windy City history. Photos. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Chicago, the saying goes, ain't ready for reform. It certainly wasn't in 1899, when sisters Ada and Minna "Everleigh" (real name: Simms) opened their brothel. As Abbott's jaunty history relates, their whorehouse was not a tawdry bang barn for johns with a nickel but a glitzy palace of paid pleasure for plutocrats. Ada and Minna's Everleigh Club prospered, protected by payoffs to Chicago's legendary political crooks "Bathhouse" Coughlin and "Hinky Dink" Kenna, but the bordello's brazenness mobilized moralists alarmed by vice, so-called white slavery in particular. An entertaining read, by turns bawdy and sad, as when a courtesan ends up dead, Abbott's account extends beyond local history because the campaign against Ada and Minna had lasting national effects: the closure of urban red-light districts and the passage of the federal Mann Act concerning prostitution. Abbott adroitly evokes the cathouse atmosphere, but it is the rapier-sharp character sketches of the cast that best show off her authorial skills and will keep readers continually bemused as they learn about the lives and times of two madams. Taylor, Gilbert --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (June 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812975995
• ISBN-13: 978-0812975994
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (135 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #23,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

  #54 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Psychology & Counseling > Sexuality > Human
  #9 in	Books > History > United States > State & Local > Illinois

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting true story, as compelling as a novel, July 14, 2007

By	Bluestalking Reader "Bluestalking Reader" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul (Hardcover)

I've been completely side-swiped for days by Karen Abbott's riveting true story of the infamous Everleigh Club brothel that operated in Chicago from 1900 to 1911. Sin in the Second City reads like a novel. I had to keep reminding myself it's absolutely true. It's just so absorbing, it's easy to forget you're not reading fiction.

Sisters Ada and Minna "Everleigh" (a name they assumed) were raised in privilege in a wealthy southern family. They were very highly educated women, intellectuals in an age that wasn't prized in the female sex. The story of how they went from high society to becoming madams is incredible, reflecting on their innate intelligence and economic and marketing savvy. But equally remarkable is the difference between their establishment and others that existed around the same time. Rather than demeaning their girls, Ada and Minna lavished money and benefits such as expensive clothing on their whores. These were girls who were tutored in the arts, making them more like geishas than common prostitutes.

The Everleigh Club was an elite bordello, drawing the likes of literary great Theodore Dreiser, the actor John Barrymore, and even a Prussian prince. This was no common whorehouse. Though the girls did provide sexual services, the Everleigh was a much more refined establishment featuring string orchestras, lavish decor, and a class of girls that were a cut above those in lesser houses.

The history presented here illustrates the high level of research Abbott conducted. To say it's thorough is a vast understatement. Not only do we get all the known history on the Everleigh, but the rest of Chicago history is likewise splayed out before us, including all that was going on politically, socially and in the literary world. Really a fascinating portrait of an age and a city, Sin in the Second City is a thrilling read I'd recommend to anyone, whether interested in Chicago history in particular or not. It's a slice of an era, and a invaluable historical record of how the nation stood at the beginning of the 20th century. It's as engaging as any novel I've ever read. I can smell the awards now.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Crassy to Classy, July 19, 2007

By	Rose Keefe "author" (Canada) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul (Hardcover)

When I picked up a copy of "Sin in the Second City" during a recent visit to Chicago, my initial thought was "Finally! Someone has seen the Everleigh Sisters for the roguish and riveting characters that they were and given their lives a book-length treatment." After finishing the book in less than two days, I have to conclude that no one could have done a better job than Karen Abbott did.

Minna and Ada Simms were two Virginia-born debutantes who took their beauty, business smarts, love of refinement, and lack of subservience to men, and realized a fortune. Their palatial brothel in Chicago's raucous Levee district made them a cause celebre for the eleven years they remained in business. They catered to the millionaire element, becoming the Nordstrom's of the flesh trade, and injected class and humor into a profession that easily destroyed the bodies and souls of the unwary. Competitors like Madam Vic Shaw and the Weiss brothers hated them for setting gilded standards that the $2 dives like the Bucket of Blood and the Sappho could never hope to match. Religious crusaders and purity leagues blasted them as flagships for the dreaded white slave trade, conveniently forgetting that the Everleigh Club was so renowned for its generous treatment of the inmates that there was a waiting list to join the ranks of Everleigh 'butterflies', as Minna called them. But as the saying goes, "A narrow mind and a wide mouth usually go together."

Although the Everleigh Club's irreverent opulence caused its downfall and ultimately the closure of the old Levee, Minna and Ada had the last laugh. They took their millions, toured Europe, and lived out the last of their days in New York.

Through free use of anecdotes that make this nonfiction book read like the best-crafted fiction, Ms. Abbott has told a riveting story of two women who became successful and wealthy on their own terms. By going for the gold ring instead of the brass one, they went down in a blaze of glory... pun intended.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Succulent Feast of a Book, July 10, 2007

By	J. Winn - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul (Hardcover)

Sin in the Second City is my favorite kind of non-fiction---a meticulously researched and multi-layered sliver of history that reads like a fast-paced and exciting novel. My favorite thing about the book is the balanced coverage given to all the sides in this complicated culture war. Abbott turns a discerning eye on the reformers and their separate motivations---some driven by faith, some by ego, and some by ambition, and mirrors those motivations in the layered characters of the madams and politicos.

The writing is stellar, the time period fascinating, the details are sumptuous---I couldn't put this book down, and I know I will be rereading it. I can't recommend this book strongly enough.