Bibliography

Algren, Nelson. Chicago: City on the Make. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1951.

This piece was used in the discussion of how Chicago was a perfect breeding ground for organized crime, and how hustling is an innate property of the city. It also was used to explain the tendencies for politicians to become corrupted, and how this was integral to the development of organized crime in the city.

Algren, Nelson. The Man with the Golden Arm. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1976.

Algren's book provided us with a number of examples of the themes we were trying to trace through our web site. While the book is set post-World War II, and our site focuses primarily on the Prohibition era 1920-1933, the mark of Prohibition seems to be still-present. One character, as we noted, is still addicted to bootleg liquor. Moreover, the book inverts the inherent criticism of Chicago as "corruptive" or "immoral." Not that the immorality or corruption of the city dwellers is erased, but Algren is not critical of these facts, presenting them as key to the real human experience.

Allsop, Kenneth. The Bootleggers and Their Era. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1961.

This was the primary source for our page, "Prohibition." This book provides a brief, yet in-depth view of the coming of Prohibition, including the organizations and figures who helped to secure it, its religious base, the history of the movement prior to the actual ratification of the Volstead Act as the Eighteenth Amendment, and the relationship between Prohibition and the organized crime which flourished in Chicago and Prohibition. We also used it to inform our page, "The Law," since the book contains an excellent section on "Big Bill" Thompson and his relationship to Chicago's organized crime rings. In short, this was probably our best source, the one which most informed our project and was most helpful in constructing and historicizing the page.

Percy, as we noted, a vehement anti-Prohibitionist who was likely being funded by brewery interests, wrote this work to seek to expose the connection between the Prohibition movement and the then-dominant Christian religious movements' attempts to homogenize American thought. Percy was, as our readers may have noted, very strong in his belief of these ideas, taking the apparent connection between Prohibition and Christianity to, or perhaps past, its logical end. We used this source, then, as an example of the modes of anti-Prohibition thought present at the time for our page, "Prohibition."

This resource contained many pictures pertaining to Al Capone and his life, as well as a wealth of background information about Capone and the mob. This source was consulted in creating the bibliography page on Capone, and served as a starting point for further research of Capone's life and activities.

Bergreen, Laurence. Capone: The Man and the Era. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.

This was our primary source for our biography on Capone ("Al Capone: Background Information"). Bergreen has written what many consider to be the biography on Al Capone. Not only does he delve deeply into the man's personal history, relating interesting and little-known facts about the man, but Bergreen brings to the reader's mind some interesting ways of thinking about Capone-- as a transitional figure from the Old World to the New, and as exemplary of the ethnic identity issues centered around immigration in the early 1900s. Unfortunately, neither of these ideas is expounded upon heavily, so we tried to further Bergreen's cursorily presented ideas in our site ("Al Capone: Analysis").

We used this site provided for several images of Al Capone, as well as to gain additional information on Al Capone's life and crimes. This source was mainly used for its images, but it also contributed to the formation of the Al Capone bibliography page.

Demaris, Ovid. Captive City. New York: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1969.

This book was critical to the construction of the page entitled "Organized Crime - How it was Changed by Prohibition." This source, which focused on the status of organized crime in Chicago during the Prohibition era, gave many statistics about gangsters and how much they earned. This piece also contained many examples of bribery and other forms of political corruption in Chicago, which were used to show how the profits earned by the exploitation of Prohibition allowed criminal gangs to expand their businesses and yet remain immune to the law.

Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. New York: Penguin Group, 1994.

We used this work only briefly in our introduction, since we didn't feel that it contained any specific references which related concretely to the themes we were pursuing. Sister Carrie does, in a way, embody the most perfect example of the idea of Chicago as corrupting in its almost storybook presentation of a country girl turning away from traditional values as she moves to Chicago. We mentioned the work as such, in passing. But, since it didn't seem to offer any interesting reflection on corruption in law or organized crime, we had no further use of the work.

Dybek, Stuart. The Coast of Chicago. New York: Picador, 1990.

From Dybek's short volume of short stories we examined "Blight." The story provided a solid, historically-based example of high-level political corruption seeping down to lower levels as federal funding for Chicago's "Official Blight Areas" was embezzled by government officials and police alike. The story's characters have come to take the fact that their area will never be refurnished for granted-- the corruption has by now become so ingrained in their minds-- it is completely normal for them.

Farrell, James T. Studs Lonigan. New York: Peguin Putnam Inc., 2001.

Farrell's huge three-volume work was the literary text we examined most heavily in our discussion of alcohol and Prohibition in Chicago literature. Despite the existence of Prohibition, Studs and his gang drink constantly, without regard for their health or the law. This relates to our themes in multiple ways, demonstrating: (1) the ease of acquiring alcohol during Prohibition; (2) the fact that many continued to drink despite the illegality of alcohol; (3) the fact that drinking was, and is, used by many even during Prohibition as an escape from one's pain. While Farrell is highly critical of Studs' drinking, seeming to damn him to death because of it, and showing it as part of the ethical failure of Studs' life, we avoided commenting on this moralization and saw the work as continuing to demonstrate the aura of Chicago as corrupting, exerting a pressure which many released through drink. The work also mentions Capone and organized crime explicitly in a few places, which we considered.

Kobler, John. The Life and World of Al Capone. New York: DaCapo Press, 1992.

This sight provided us with one idea and fact. The fact: Capone's murder of his two associates who had been providing information to his enemies after serving them a lavish meal. The idea: that this represents an affinity with old Italian gangsters' policy of "hospitality before execution." From this we moved back to Bergreen's notion of the "Old World," here hospitality, versus the "New World," murder and immorality, darkness.

Landesco, John. Organized Crime in Chicago. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1929.

This book gave a very detailed account of the activity of organized criminals, including Al Capone, throughout Chicago's early 1900s. This source was essential in relating the corruptive influence of the city of Chicago seen in the literature to that seen by sociologists and criminologists. This book was used heavily in describing the different businesses of gangsters in Chicago, and how gangsters' profits enabled them to buy off police and politicians, and thus increase the volumes of their illegal businesses.

Sandburg, Carl. Chicago Poems. New York: Dover Publications, 1994.

Sandburg's poems are filled with an aura of Chicago, setting the city forth as a world of hustle, work, smoke-- in general, of modernity. For our site, we examined his poem "Chicago" as forming and being informed by the corruption of the city. The poem makes specific reference to the mob, to killers being set free by the "crooked" city. To a seemingly greater extent, however, as we just said, Sandburg does much to create an image of Chicago, one which persists to this day.

Sullivan, Edward D. Rattling the Cup on Chicago Crime. New York: The Vangaurd Press, 1929.

This book was used fairly extensively in describing the rackets of Chicago gangsters in the pre- and post- Prohibition eras in the pages describing organized crime in Chicago. It provided many examples of the specific activities of these gangsters, including those of gambling, prostitution, and the production, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages. This source also gave several prime examples of the corruption in the government system that enabled organized crime to reach the levels it did during Prohibition.

This book provided us with most of the information we used about Eliot Ness. Especially interesting to us was the fact that he struggled throughout his life with a drinking problem. The book also discusses the media's fictionalization of the lives of many of the characters in Chicago's history of organized crime. For example, the television and films about the "Untouchables" have exaggerated the violence and action in the raids Ness and his group conducted, and obscured the fact that Ness seemed at the time hungry for his own celebrity, as he would hold frequent press conferences announcing when and where raids would take place (showing that the prestige was more important to him than the success of his mission).

Turner's article from this gentlemen's magazine at the time was used in our "Prohibition" page as an example of Prohibitionist rhetoric. It further provides a number of facts as to the extent of the bootlegging operations during Prohibition.

Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.

Native Son was another work which was central to our relation of the history of crime in Chicago to the city's literature. The book, as we noted in our Prohibition page, is heavily critical of drinking, presenting it as a temporary escape which distracts men from truly important goal of social change by providing us with a temporary erasure of trouble. The work also provides a very strong fictionalization of the corrupt aura of the city through the character of the District Attorney and the Red-fearing media.

From this website, a picture of an Al Capone police report was used.

This website was used not for content, but rather for various images that appear throughout our website.

This website supplied a number of images we used throughout the page.

This source was used only for the image of Robert Stack as Elliot Ness in the TV series "The Untouchables".

In addition to providing us with multiple images, which the authors have publicly archived, the site also contained short discussions of many smaller aspects of the Prohibition movement. These were invaluable to us as a quick source of reference information with almost exactly the volume of information we wanted from each aspect.

This website was used not for content, but rather for various images that appear throughout our website.

This was a very helpful source for various historical images of the city of Chicago, as well as for various political cartoons that appear throughout this website. Although most of the pictures of this online resource pertained to Michigan, several useful images concerning Chicago were found.

This resource was helpful in finding images pertaining to Chicago's past, especially between the years 1900 and 1933. The images appearing in this online archive first appeared in the newspaper articles of the Chicago Daily News.

The Great Lakes Brewing Company has provided us with a great joke: naming one of their beers for Eliot Ness. The site provided us with an image of the beer and its label.

This source was used only for an image of a former Chicago speakeasy.

This website was used not for content, but rather for various images that appear throughout our website.