Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul
Random House
July 2007
On Sale: July 10, 2007
Featuring: Ada Everleigh; Minna Everleigh
384 pages ISBN: 1400065305 EAN: 9781400065301 Hardcover Add to Wish List
Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American historyโand the catalyst for a culture war that rocked the nation. Operating in Chicagoโs notorious Levee district at the dawn of the last century, the Clubโs proprietors, two aristocratic sisters named Minna and Ada Everleigh, welcomed moguls and actors, senators and athletes, foreign dignitaries and literary icons, into their stately double mansion, where thirty stunning Everleigh โbutterfliesโ awaited their arrival. Courtesans named Doll, Suzy Poon Tang, and Brick Top devoured raw meat to the delight of Prince Henry of Prussia and recited poetry for Theodore Dreiser. Whereas lesser madams pocketed most of a harlotโs earnings and kept a โwhipperโ on staff to mete out discipline, the Everleighs made sure their girls dined on gourmet food, were examined by an honest physician, and even tutored in the literature of Balzac.
Not everyone appreciated the sistersโ attempts to elevate the industry. Rival Levee madams hatched numerous schemes to ruin the Everleighs, including an attempt to frame them for the death of department store heir Marshall Field, Jr. But the sistersโ most daunting foes were the Progressive Era reformers, who sent the entire country into a frenzy with lurid tales of โwhite slaveryโโโthe allegedly rampant practice of kidnapping young girls and forcing them into brothels. This furor shaped Americaโs sexual culture and had repercussions all the way to the White House, including the formation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
With a cast of characters that includes Jack Johnson, John Barrymore, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., William Howard Taft, โHinky Dinkโ Kenna, and Al Capone, Sin in the Second City is Karen Abbottโs colorful, nuanced portrait of the iconic Everleigh sisters, their world-famous Club, and the perennial clash between our nationโs hedonistic impulses and Puritanical roots. Culminating in a dramatic last stand between brothel keepers and crusading reformers, Sin in the Second City offers a vivid snapshot of Americaโs journey from Victorian-era propriety to twentieth-century modernity.
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