Big Bill of Chicago
By Lloyd Wendt; Herman Kogan; Rick Kogan (Foreword by); Bette Jore
(Northwestern University Press, Paperback, 9780810123199, 400pp.)
Publication Date: November 2005
Categories: Political History, United States - State & Local - Midwest, Political
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To some he was a humanitarian and builder. Others scorned him as a fake and friend of gangsters with "the carcass of a rhinoceros and the brain of a baboon." This rollicking history traces the rise of William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson, Chicago's famous reform mayor, from his upper class roots to his years as a teenaged cowboy, from his fame as a star athlete to the years as a master politician in a world where the ward boss ruled and whiskey for the voters cost a quarter a shot. Big Bill of Chicago profiles the whole brawling arena of city politics from the turn of the century to the Prohibition Era. It is a primer in the way American politics worked-and works-and a map along the countless winding ways even the dirtiest deal can lead to something great.
Lloyd Wendt was a long-time Chicago journalist and the author of Chicago Tribune: The Rise of a Great American Newspaper (Rand McNally, 1979), and (with Herman Kogan) Give the Lady What She Wants: The Story of Marshall Field & Company (And Books, 1979).
Herman Kogan (1914-1989) spent fifty years covering Chicago, many with the Chicago Sun-Times. He is the author of Yesterday's Chicago (E.A. Seemann, 1976) and (with Lloyd Wendt) Give the Lady What She Wants: The Story of Marshall Field & Company (And Books, 1979).
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