Wicked Pittsburgh

by Richard Gazarik

Overview

Join author Richard Gazarik as he reveals the wicked history of the Steel City.

Muckraking journalist Walter Liggett dubbed Pittsburgh the "Metropolis of Corruption" in 1930 when he reported the city had more vice per square foot than New York, Detroit, Cleveland or Boston. Decades earlier, the Magee-Flinn political machine ruled public officials, and crooked police helped racketeers protect brothels and gambling dens. Mayor (later Governor) David Lawrence was indicted several times for graft but acquitted each time. Even Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney Sr. colluded with gangsters, according to FBI reports.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467138567
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	10/08/2018
Series:	Wicked
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	1,052,326
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Richard Gazarik spent more than four decades as a journalist in Western Pennsylvania. He has won awards for his writing and investigating reporting into public and corporate corruption in Pennsylvania and has written extensively about the bombing of Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland; the terrorist attack on United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on September 11, 2001; and the rescue of the Quecreek Miners in 2002. He is the author of Black Valley: The Life and Death of Fannie Sellins (2011) and Prohibition Pittsburgh (The History Press, 2017). He is a graduate of West Virginia University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9

Introduction: Metropolis of Corruption 11

1 Captain "Smiling Johnny" Klein 23

2 Little Canada 33

3 Booth-Flinn: The Company that Built Early Pittsburgh 43

4 Pittsburgh by the Numbers 53

5 A Blind Eye 63

6 City Hall Scoundrels 71

7 Vote Early, Vote Often 82

8 Pittsburgh's Clown Prince of Politics 90

9 Boss Lawrence 100

10 Crime Never Paid for Roxie Long 108

11 Pittsburgh's Gilded Palaces of Sin 115

12 Pittsburgh's Iron Curtain 126

13 The Harder They Fall 135

Bibliography 145

Index 157

About the Author 160