American Mafia: Chicago: True Stories of Families Who Made Windy City History

by William Griffith

Overview

Everyone knows stories about the American Mafia and its varied forms of crime, from racketeering to stock manipulation to murder.  American Mafia: Chicago explores the Windy City, strolling through its neighborhoods and imagining scenes from the past—telling the stories of the men, women, and families and revealing the events behind the legends and the history of the families' beginnings and founding members. 
Featuring the most fascinating stories from the early days, when loosely-organized, incredibly secretive gangs terrorized neighborhoods with names like Little Hell, through the mob’s headiest years, when Al Capone and his men pretty well controlled the city, American Mafia: Chicago offers tantalizing glimpses into the era when Chicago was ruled by gangs with their ever-twisting allegiances and tangled webs of relationships.
Most of the buildings are gone now.

But the stories are still there, if you know where to look.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493006045
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	923,056
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

William Griffith is known to his friends as "Wild Bill," but actually lives a quiet life with his dogs in a small apartment beneath the El tracks on Lake Street - you get used to the noise after a while. His doorknob was salvaged from the rubble of the Lexington Hotel, and the apartment itself is reputed to have once been the home of a member of the Genna Brothers gang. His grandfather was a gangbuster in northern Missouri.

Table of Contents

Introduction vi

Chapter 1 Little Hell and the Black Hand 1

Chapter 2 Il Diavolo and the Devil's Gang 17

Chapter 3 Big Jim and Johnny the Fox 31

Chapter 4 The Beer Wars of '23 48

Chapter 5 The End of the Alliance 65

Chapter 6 Death of a Big Shot 78

Chapter 7 Revenge Follows Revenge 92

Chapter 8 The Brief Reign of the Genna Brothers 100

Chapter 9 Capone's First Mistake 120

Chapter 10 The Bark of the Guns 134

Chapter 11 Peace in the City? 144

Chapter 12 A New Chicago 157

Chapter 13 "They're Full of Dead Men in There!" 164

Chapter 14 Closing In 188

Epilogues and Aftermaths 203

Select Bibliography 216

About the Author 220