Operation Greylord was the longest and most successful undercover investigation in FBI history, and the largest corruption bust ever in the U.S. It resulted in bribery and tax charges against 103 judges, lawyers, and other court personnel, and, eventually, more than seventy indictments.And it was led by Terrence Hake, a young assistant prosecutor in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in Chicago, who worked undercover for nearly four years, accepting bribes, making payoffs, w...

The high times, the rubouts, the payoffs -- they're all here in Wayne Klatt's account of the Windy City's wildest years. The entire country -- the world -- was shocked and entertained by what went on in Chicago during Prohibition. Learn how it all happened, from a step-by-step speakeasy set-up to the White Sox scandal to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Pull back the gauzy curtains of the gaudy era when Al Capone contributed to Mayor William Thompson's campaign and Governor Len Small used...

Chicago's breathtaking Lake Shore Drive, with its beaches and luxury homes, has its origin in a neglected marsh and a clandestine land development. Meet the uncrowned king of the disputed shore, George Wellington Streeter, the outlandish swindler, unlikely hero and self-proclaimed founder of the Gold Coast who tried to secede from the state of Illinois. Opposing him was the quiet vision of Potter Palmer and the full weight of his investment syndicate. With this keen piece of investigative ...

In 1980, Terrence Hake was a young assistant prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in Chicago, Illinois. In April of that year, he agreed to assist the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office in an investigation of the county court system, known nationwide to be a hotbed of bribery, corruption, and mob ties.For three and a half years, untrained and with ever-diminishing naiveté, Hake worked undercover posing as a corrupt prosecutor by accepting bribes from att...

Larry W. Eyler was caught in 1983, accused of being the "homosexual highway killer," responsible for 22 murders in three states. Unbelievably, he was indicted for just one killing and spent three months in jail before an Illinois judge determined that the overwhelming evidence against him was tainted. He was released. Six months later Eyler was caught again. This time he was accused of a brutal, unimaginable murder of a 15-year-old street hustler. Crime journalist Gera-Lind Kolarik was the...

On the night of April 7, 1990, newlyweds Nancy and Richard Langert were brutally shot in the basement of their suburban Chicago home. There were no leads. Nothing was stolen. The only clue was an illegible message Nancy left behind, written in her own blood. It was a crime that shocked the community and baffled the FBI and seven local police departments. They explored every prospect -- from IRA assassinations to Mafia hit. But it was a tough Illinois policewoman who would track down the ki...

Accounts of the early events of the computing industry—the Turing machine, the massive Colossus, the ENIAC computer—are well-told tales, and equally well known is the later emergence of Silicon Valley and the rise of the personal computer. Yet there is an extraordinary untold middle history—with deep roots in Minnesota. From the end of World War II through the 1970s, Minnesota was home to the first computing-centered industrial district in the world.Drawing on rare archival documen...

Published in Wisconsin's Sesquicentennial year, this fourth volume in The History of Wisconsin series covers the twenty tumultuous years between the World's Columbian Exposition and the First World War when Wisconsin essentially reinvented itself, becoming the nation's "laboratory of democracy."The period known as the Progressive Era began to emerge in the mid-1890s. A sense of crisis and a widespread clamor for reform arose in reaction to rapid changes in population, tech...

Most Americans imagine the Civil War in terms of clear and defined boundaries of freedom and slavery: a straightforward division between the slave states of Kentucky and Missouri and the free states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas. However, residents of these western border states, Abraham Lincoln's home region, had far more ambiguous identities-and contested political loyalties-than we commonly assume. In The Rivers Ran Backward, Christopher Phillips sheds light on the flu...

From its humble beginnings in 1884 as a one-story frame building with one bay to house Hose Company 4 and its team of horses, Engine Company 78 has been the firefighting sentinel at the end of Waveland Avenue, sitting in the shadow of Wrigley Field. Using vintage photographs and moving stories from firefighters themselves, Karen Kruse captures the spirit and heroism of this historic Chicago landmark. Captain Robert F. Kruse served the Chicago Fire Department for 30 years, half of those at ...

“In the fifties, sleek Mixmasters were replacing rusty eggbeaters, and new pressure-cookers blew their tops in kitchens all over town. There were kids everywhere, and new ‘ranch-style’ houses filled vacant lots. . . . Turquoise Studebakers and dusty-rose Chevy BelAirs with flamboyant fins and lots of chrome replaced dark pre-war cars. Cameras took color snapshots instead of black-and-white. We wore red canvas tennis shoes and lemon yellow shorts, and bright blue popsicles melted down our c...

This true crime history recounts more than a century of crime, deviousness, and disaster in the North Star State.In Minnesota Mayhem, local historian and author Ben Welter explores the best of the state's worst moments. Culled from the archives of the Minneapolis Tribune and its successor newspapers, these stories and photos range from the catastrophic to the chillingly curious and the simply strange.Among the true tales told in these pages, Welter...