Chicago S First Crime King Michael Cassius Mcdonald

"Michael Cassius McDonald arrived in Chicago as a teenage scam artist who quickly sketched a blueprint for running the city through its criminal underworld. Chicago's original mob boss, he procured presidential pardons, stuffed mayoral ballot boxes, and operated the town's plushest gambling parlor. But he was also a philanthropist who befriended Clarence Darrow, employed Theodore Dreiser, promoted the World's Fair, and funded the Lake Street L. His scandalous private life mirrored the truth of his career, with more than one marriage mired in a love triangle and a murder trial. Kelly Pucci charts the rise of Chicago's first kingpin."--Provided by publisher.

The Gambler King of Clark Street: Michael C. McDonald and the Rise of Chicago’s Democratic Machine tells the story of a larger-than-life figure who fused Chicago’s criminal underworld with the city’s political and commercial spheres to create an urban machine built on graft, bribery, and intimidation. In this first ever biography of McDonald, author Richard C. Lindberg vividly paints the life of the Democratic kingmaker against the wider backdrop of nineteenth-century Chicago crime and politics. Twenty-five years before Al Capone’s birth, Michael McDonald was building the foundations of the modern Chicago Democratic machine. By marshaling control of and suborning a complex web of precinct workers, ward and county bosses, justices of the peace, police captains, contractors, suppliers, and spoils-men, the undisputed master of the gambling syndicates could elect mayoral candidates, finagle key appointments for political operatives willing to carry out his mandates, and coerce law enforcement and the judiciary. The resulting machine was dedicated to the supremacy of the city’s gambling, vice, and liquor rackets during the waning years of the Gilded Age. McDonald was warmly welcomed into the White House by two sitting presidents who recognized him for what he was: the reigning “boss” of Chicago. In a colorful and often riotous life, McDonald seemed to control everything around him—everything that is, except events in his personal life. His first wife, the fiery Mary Noonan McDonald, ran off with a Catholic priest. The second, Dora Feldman, twenty-five years his junior, murdered her teenaged lover in a sensational 1907 scandal that broke Mike’s heart and drove him to an early grave. Michael McDonald’s name has long been cited in the published work of city historians, members of academia, and the press as the principal architect of a unified criminal enterprise that reached into the corridors of power in Chicago, Cook County, the state of Illinois, and all the way to the Oval Office. The Gambler King of Clark Street is both a major addition to Chicago’s historical literature and a revealing biography of a powerful and troubled man.

Drinking in the Windy City has deep roots. Long before corner bars stitched the social fabric of Chicago's neighborhoods together, raucous pioneers like Mark Beaubien were fermenting over the untapped potential of the unbroken prairie. Take a determined saunter from the clamor of Chicago's first breweries, through the hidden passages of thousands of speakeasies and then back into the current of the contemporary craft beer revival. Follow a path plastered with portraits of infamous saloonkeepers and profiles of historic bars. Author June Sawyers serves as an expert guide, stopping very so often to collect a vintage beer label, explain an original recipe or salute the heady history that sits atop the City of Big Shouders. --Back cover.

Several encyclopedias overview the contemporary system of criminal justice in America, but full understanding of current social problems and contemporary strategies to deal with them can come only with clear appreciation of the historical underpinnings of those problems. Thus, this five-volume work surveys the history and philosophy of crime, punishment, and criminal justice institutions in America from colonial times to the present. It covers the whole of the criminal justice system, from crimes, law enforcement and policing, to courts, corrections and human services. Among other things, this encyclopedia: explicates philosophical foundations underpinning our system of justice; charts changing patterns in criminal activity and subsequent effects on legal responses; identifies major periods in the development of our system of criminal justice; and explores in the first four volumes - supplemented by a fifth volume containing annotated primary documents - evolving debates and conflicts on how best to address issues of crime and punishment. Its signed entries in the first four volumes--supplemented by a fifth volume containing annotated primary documents--provide the historical context for students to better understand contemporary criminological debates and the contemporary shape of the U.S. system of law and justice.

Whether prehistoric and glacially slow or swift and modern, countless changes to Mackinac Island have driven much of its history out of sight and memory. Eons ago, waves washed away soft rock to leave behind limestone formations like Arch Rock, which have survived virtually unchanged for thousands of years. Other natural curiosities were regrettably destroyed in the twentieth century. To this day, the Grand Hotel welcomes guests from around the world but lost are smaller hotels such as the New Mackinac and the Lasley House, where a large--and live--bear stood chained to the front door. Steamships and schooners that brought celebrities like Mark Twain and members of the Barnum & Bailey Circus to the island long ago sank in the Straits. Author and historian Kelly Pucci explores the lost history of Mackinac Island.

The Gambler King of Clark Street: Michael C. McDonald and the Rise of Chicago's Democratic Machine tells the story of a larger-than-life figure who fused Chicago's criminal underworld with the city's political and commercial spheres to create an urban machine built on graft, bribery, and intimidation. In this first ever biography of McDonald, author Richard C. Lindberg vividly paints the life of the Democratic kingmaker against the wider backdrop of nineteenth-century Chicago crime and politics. Twenty-five years before Al Capone's birth, Michael McDonald was building.

In recent years, in the context of the War on Terror and globalization, there has been an increased interest in terrorism and organized crime in academia, yet historical research into such phenomena is relatively scarce. This book resets the balance and emphasizes the importance of historical research to understanding terrorism and organized crime. This book explores historical accounts of organized crime and terrorism, drawing on research from around the world in such areas as the USA, UK, Ireland, France, Colombia, Somalia, Burma, Turkey and Trinidad and Tobago. Combining key case studies with fresh conceptualizations of organized crime and terrorism, this book reinvigorates scholarship by comparing and contrasting different historical accounts and considering their overlaps. Critical ‘lessons learned’ are drawn out from each chapter, providing valuable insights for current policy, practice and scholarship. This book is an indispensable guide for understanding the wider history of terrorism and organized crime. It maps key historical changes and trends in this area and underlines the vital importance of history in understanding critical contemporary issues. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and written by leading criminologists, historians and political scientists, this book will be of particular interest to students of terrorism/counter-terrorism, organized crime, drug policy, criminology, security studies, politics, international relations, sociology and history.

Why do Americans alternately celebrate and condemn gangsters, outlaws and corrupt politicians? Why do they immortalize Al Capone while forgetting his more successful contemporaries George Remus or Roy Olmstead? Why are some public figures repudiated for their connections to the mob while others gain celebrity status? Drawing on historical accounts, the author analyzes the public’s understanding of organized crime and questions some of our most deeply held assumptions about crime and its role in society.