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Title: Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul
ISBN: 1400154669
Author:
Karen Abbott
Publicate Date: 2007-07-17
Publish: 2007-07-17
List Price: $24.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: MP3 CD
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $14.30
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $9.99
Amazon Merchant Price: $19.74
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Skipping thru time
As fascinating as the stories are, and as meticulous as the research appears to be, the structure of the narrative was frustrating. The chapters jump around and one loses all sense of chronology. I wish the book was better organized. I really wanted to like it more.
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2: History lesson + page turning tale of scandal, devotion and two sisters way ahead of their time
"Well behaved women rarely make history" - if that's the case, the famed Everleigh sisters might as well be the spokeswomen for the concept. These classy and conniving sisters revamped the lucrative brothel industry of the early1900's Chicago (well, the entire nation to be more precise). A little history, a little fiction and a lot of time travel - this story takes you back to a lavish smoky parlor filled with characters as opulent as the d??cor. I devoured it in days that felt like minutes.
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3: Ghosts in the Loop
When I was five years old, Reading Rainbow's Lavar Burton told me weekly that books can be magic. Come to find out, he was right; books can transport you through time. Karen Abbott has dusted off her wand and brought the magic. Like Devil in the White City before it, Sin in the Second City is all encompassing. The vast amount of information Abbott gives about Chicago in the early 1900s allows us to feel like we are there. We see the city's magnificent graystone mansions, hear its El cars rattle past on the tracks. Abbott navigates so well the balancing act of providing lots of technical details - about Chicago politics, Levee rules and regulations, and court cases involving the Mann Act - while still focusing her attention on the major players, namely the Everleigh sisters, so that we do get some historical background but the book reads more like fiction than a text.
We get a sense of who these women were in their personal lives. Clever and thought-provoking quotes from Minna provide an introduction to several chapters. These sisters are smart and funny and have very modern concerns; they are not locked in time. Perhaps the cornerstone of history appreciation is realizing that people always have and always will be basically the same. Abbott brings this realization about in the most non-intrusive way, by including the little humanizing details like Big Jim Colosimo's penchant for cooking up a big pot of spaghetti during social calls and Minna's Everleigh's routine carriage ride to the bank to make deposits with a choice "butterfly" in tow. As a former teacher, I wonder if we are doing the best job we could as a society to preserve and bring history back to life. Thanks to Abbott, I can see the ghosts of Vic Shaw and company carousing along Michigan Avenue.
To her credit, not only does Abbott bring the residents of the Levee district back to life, but she portrays them fairly, with a sympathetic voice, despite the nature of their enterprise. It would be so easy to discount the Levee aldermen and their henchmen or any of the Everleighs' bitter competitors as villains, but Abbott appreciates the gray areas and allows the reader to make his or her own value judgments.
The structure of the book is also worth mentioning. Abbott does an excellent job weaving in and out of topics. It's the literary equivalent of collecting random photographs and putting them into a scrapbook so that they make sense juxtaposed. Details about Bell and other reformers and the day-to-day goings on in the development of the fight against white slavery fit seamlessly between the more salacious stories of the Everleigh courtesans.
Ultimately, Abbott tells a scintillating story while simultaneously bringing up the BIG issues - bias and sensationalism in media coverage, the hypocrisy of some of the religious reformers, and the fight for women's suffrage and for fair wages - namely how the investigation into white slavery served as an opportunity for women to insert themselves into political discourse.
Overall, an amazing piece! I highly recommend it.
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4: I Love the Naughty Ladies
What I love about this book:
- Terrific writing with vivid details about the lives of the Everleigh Sisters
- A real feel for what it was like to live and work in the demimonde at the turn of the century
- A sense of drama with the stories of the rivalries between brothels, the religious movement and the machinations of the political and legal systems.
- Excellent insight into the greater social forces in regards to sexuality and women
This is just a fascinating read - if you're like me, you won't put it down until the last page (and i am a notorious half-finisher, so that's quite a feat!) A fantastic choice for book clubs too!
I *highly* recommend this - one chapter in and I guarantee that you will become a rabid fan like me.
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5: CANNOT PUT IT DOWN
For those that love to read a book that grabs them and doesn't let go - Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City is a MUST. Not only does the reader get an enjoyable history lesson- but along the way Karen shows us how so much of what we know and experience today - is not new at all.
The portrait of the Everleigh sisters is simply fascinating, Chicago of the early 1900's was made for Abbott's prose - and the best part is - She's writing another book. People will read again - and Karen is one of the reasons why. Read this book. Its SUPER.
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