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James T. Farrell and Baseball is a social history of baseball on Chicago’s South Side, drawing on the writings of novelist James T. Farrell along with historical sources. Charles DeMotte shows how baseball in the early decades of the twentieth century developed on all levels and in all areas of Chicago, America’s second largest city at the time, and how that growth intertwined with Farrell’s development as a fan and a writer who used baseball as one of the major themes of his work. DeMotte goes beyond Farrell’s literary focus to tell a larger story about baseball on Chicago’s South Side during this time—when Charles Comiskey’s White Sox won two World Series and were part of a rich baseball culture that was widely played at the amateur, semipro, and black ball levels. DeMotte highlights the 1919–20 Black Sox fix and scandal, which traumatized not only Farrell and Chicago but also baseball and the broader culture. By tying Farrell’s fictional and nonfictional works to Chicago’s vibrant baseball history, this book fills an important gap in the history of baseball during the Deadball Era.
In a region famous for its flamboyant politicians, Earl K. Long was one of the most flamboyant of them all. This first full-scale biography of the former Louisiana governor explores his controversial life-style and his strong family ties, his raw humor and his political savvy, his abuse of power and his accomplishments in the areas of civil rights and public services. Michael L. Kurtz and Morgan D. Peoples provide new information from recently declassified FBI files concerning Earl's ties with organized crime figures, give the first comprehensive account of his stays in mental institutions in 1959, and offer factual information about his notorious relationship with the stripper Blaze Star. Based on more than two decades of research in a variety of sources, this important biography fills a serious gap in the history of modern Louisiana politics.
"For the student of geology have been succinctly set forth the operation of the pre-historic influences which were at work upon the site of Chicago ages before man trod upon the earth. Following this is a complete and connected, though condensed, narrative history of the 'Garden City,' through its various stages of village, town and municipality, showing the formative causes and describing the central events of each decade in Chicago's civic, financial and political relations. In connection with this narrative history, but following it, many subjects of special interest or importance have been treated topically. Among the most prominent of these may be enumerated : trade and commerce, the ra...
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