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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
As someone who lived in Chicago for a few months and even bought this book at the History Museum, it was fascinating. As a history major, I loved it. As someone with a decent attention span, it was hard to get through.
The book has been researched extensively (hence a hefty portion of pages being referenced), but it sometimes adds too much detail. The book is around 550 pages of pure text and it’s a lot of fact after fact after fact. As someone who is used to reading history textbooks, that wasn’t abnormal. To someone who had just read “Devil in the White City” and was looking for another fun Chicago historical thriller, this would fall flat. It’s just so dense.
However, the attention to detail makes MY little heart sing. Crazy to think I lived so close to infamous places such as the garage where the Valentine’s Day Massacre (which I walked to on a Sunday afternoon, it’s just an empty grassy field in between two buildings. No plaque or anything. The restaurant across the street is all about the 20s speakeasy style haha!) occurred and I walked past places ruled by gangland Chicago a century ago.
The book has been researched extensively (hence a hefty portion of pages being referenced), but it sometimes adds too much detail. The book is around 550 pages of pure text and it’s a lot of fact after fact after fact. As someone who is used to reading history textbooks, that wasn’t abnormal. To someone who had just read “Devil in the White City” and was looking for another fun Chicago historical thriller, this would fall flat. It’s just so dense.
However, the attention to detail makes MY little heart sing. Crazy to think I lived so close to infamous places such as the garage where the Valentine’s Day Massacre (which I walked to on a Sunday afternoon, it’s just an empty grassy field in between two buildings. No plaque or anything. The restaurant across the street is all about the 20s speakeasy style haha!) occurred and I walked past places ruled by gangland Chicago a century ago.
informative
slow-paced
Well-researched and -written, but a bit much for someone with a casual interest such as myself. At times I felt like I was listening to a five year old explain all the dinosaurs to me, and I wanted to yell, "Just tell me about T Rex!" If you have a deeper interest in Chicago history, the mob, or Prohibition era law enforcement, you will love this book.