Another Lindberg Baby: The Gambler King of Clark Street

Prolific Chicago writer Richard Lindberg is busily adding more arrows to his journalistic quiver. In February Lindberg, along with Carol Carlson, will see Chicago Yesterday & Today hit the shelves. It's described as being lavishly illustrated with photos from, well, yesterday and Chicago today. Duh!

In June, however, Lindberg's The Gambler King of Clark Street: Michael C. McDonald and the Rise of Chicago's Democratic Machine is being released by Southern Illinois University Press:

Twenty-five years before Al Capone’s birth, Michael McDonald was building the foundations of the modern Chicago Democratic machine. By marshaling control and suborning a bewildering maze of precinct workers, ward and county bosses, justices of the peace, police captains, contractors, suppliers, and spoils-men, the undisputed master of the gambling syndicates could elect mayoral candidates, finagle key appointments for political operatives willing to carry out his mandates, and coerce law enforcement and the judiciary. The resulting machine was dedicated to the supremacy of the city’s gambling, vice, and liquor rackets during the waning years of the Gilded Age.

Michael McDonald’s name has long been cited in the published work of city historians, members of academia, and the press as the principal architect of a unified criminal enterprise that reached into the corridors of power in City Hall, Cook County, the state of Illinois...

The "ChicagoBookBabe,"(my nom de blog) predicts it will be a winner.

Recommended reading:
Genesis of Organized Crime in Chicago

Michael Cassius McDonald (1839-1907)

Organized Crime in Chicago (Wikipedia)

Crime and Chicago's Image (Encyclopedia of Chicago)