OUT of a clear blue sky, amid a wave of terrorist bombings, a commercial airship crashes among the skyscrapers of the financial district, burning victims alive at their desks. But this catastrophe was not the work of Al Qaeda. It happened on July 21, 1919, when a stray spark ignited the 10,000 cubic feet of hydrogen in the Goodyear blimp Wingfoot Express as it floated above Chicago's crowded Loop. With Twitteresque speed, sportswriters at Comiskey Park watching the Yankees play the soon-to-be-Black Sox began to telegraph the news across the country, even before the Wingfoot exploded through the skylight of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, killing more than a dozen people. Yet America's first major aviation disaster was just the beginning of what Gary Krist, in "City of Scoundrels," suggests were the worst two weeks in Chicago history. On July 22, a 6-year-old girl disappeared. She was last seen with a man who had shown "conspicuous interest" in young girls. The suspect was arrested, interrogated, deprived of a lawyer and sleep. Detectives employed an alienist (a psychiatrist) and one of them dressed as a priest to trick the man into confessing. They even let the girl's father assault him. But the tactics failed to produce a solid lead, escalating pressure on them to arrest all suspected "morons," as pedophiles were called in those days. While this horrific whodunit was unfolding, wider municipal crises were also terrifying Chicagoans, including a rash of bombings thought to be the work of either Bolshevik revolutionaries or those hoping to intimidate the city's black population, which had doubled in less than three years. "Half a Million Darkies From Dixie" is how Col. Robert R. McCormick's Tribune described the migration, inflaming the resentment of working-class whites forced to compete for scarce jobs and housing. Still devoted to the party of Lincoln, black voters were crucial to Republican Mayor William Hale Thompson's reelection in April. He appointed blacks to prominent civic posts and boosted their paltry numbers in his police department - the same department that was steering gambling and prostitution into their neighborhoods while failing to deter bombings and lesser abuses. These unstable elements achieved critical mass on July 27, when five young black men swimming in Lake Michigan drifted across the invisible line dividing segregated beaches near 29th Street. A man on the whites-only beach hurled rocks at them, killing Eugene Williams, who drowned after being struck in the head. When a white cop began arresting a black man instead of the stone-thrower, sporadic violence mushroomed into a shooting war. Many on the mostly Irish police force sided with the white "athletic clubs," de facto gangs (including a 17-year-old Richard J. Daley) that had instigated most of the mayhem. What might have become a one-sided massacre shifted closer to an even contest when black former doughboys aggressively defended their community. "Well, Negroes, you must get guns, guns I said!" one black weekly encouraged them. "We might just as well die fighting in America as to die fighting in France." To the civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois, the veterans "are not the same men anymore." Meanwhile the journalist Ida Wells-Barnett chided the mayor for failing to protect all his constituents. To her, it looked "like Chicago is trying to rival the South in its race hatred against the Negro." YET the battles did not keep transit workers from voting to strike, leaving the city, Krist writes, "paralyzed at its most vulnerable moment." Worse, Mayor Thompson and Gov. Frank O. Lowden chose to play chicken with the racial crisis, daring each other to call out the militia. By the time the National Guard was finally deployed, 136 whites and 263 blacks had been slaughtered, though The Tribune's coverage insinuated that blacks were responsible for 80 percent of the killing. Into this blood-soaked narrative Krist weaves no shortage of textured if disparate stories - not only the crashing blimp and missing girl, but also tangential accounts by diarists, as well as both cameos and lengthy profiles of Chicagoans famous and infamous. Though some readers may find it precariously overpopulated, "City of Scoundrels" is a lavishly intricate, well-paced account of a great city lashed to the breaking point by a political perfect storm. Krist, the author of "The White Cascade" and five works of fiction, renders a nuanced portrait of a mayor most often remembered as a bombastic demagogue (and wannabe cowboy) at the head of a crooked machine. As "Big Bill the Builder," he expanded lakefront parks and implemented other key portions of Daniel Bumham's ambitious Plan of Chicago, paving the way for what Krist calls "perhaps the most architecturally distinguished and physically impressive city in the Americas." Yet the city of the big shoulders and steel-framed neo-Classical skyscrapers also devolved into a gangsters' paradise during Thompson's 12 years in office. Above all, "City of Scoundrels" freshly illuminates how the riots of 1919 were a turning point for African-Americans. "We made the supreme sacrifice," one black veteran told the poet-reporter Carl Sandburg, "now we want to see our country live up to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence." Another man put it this way: "Conditions in the states had not changed, but we blacks had. We were determined not to take it anymore." James McManus, the author of "Positively Fifth Street" and "Cowboys Full," teaches at the School of the Art institute of Chicago.

In 1919, Chicago was the second most populous city in the nation and a giant commercial center. Yet in Europe and the U.S., many still viewed the city as a raw, unsophisticated town whose high culture lagged well behind that of more glittering urban centers. There were, predictably, aspirations among the city's elite to change that perception. Then, beginning on July 21 of that year, Chicago endured a perfect storm of man-made disasters that reduced the city to chaos and reinforced the city's primitive image. These included the crashing of a dirigible that killed 13 people and maimed others, the murder of a six-year-old child, a paralyzing transit strike, and a devastating race riot. Presiding over this turmoil was Mayor William (Big Bill) Thompson, portrayed here as a man with enormous political and sensual appetites but doubtful governing skills. Other prominent Chicago political and cultural personalities weave in and out of the narrative, including Robert McCormick and Ida Wells, but the strongest part of Krist's story is his recounting of how ordinary Chicagoans coped with these successive body blows to their city. This is a superior slice of urban history.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2010 Booklist

Drawing readers in by focusing on the stories of individual Chicoans affected by a series of tragic events, Krist (The White Cascade) describes a Chicago that was "push[ed]. to the edge of civic disintegration" by 12 days of crises in the summer of 1919. On Monday, July 21, an experimental Goodyear blimp flying over the densely populated downtown Loop district to promote an amusement park suddenly burst into flames and crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, injuring 27 and killing 13. The next day, the six-year-old daughter of Scottish immigrant grocers was snatched and choked to death by a neighbor who buried her body in the basement of their apartment building. On Saturday, July 26, a highly regarded municipal court judge committed suicide by jumping from his City Hall chambers, and on Sunday, a black youth's death caused by a white bather at a whites'-only beach sparked a race riot on the South Side. As the rioting continued, a transit strike paralyzed Chicago on Tuesday, July 29, and endangering lives by playing politics, the controversial Mayor Big Bill Thompson dithered about calling in the National Guard to quell the violence. Krist serves up a solid, well-informed, and vibrant slice of urban history. Map. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche (2007) returns with a tale of air disaster, race and ethnic riots, labor violence, child murder, political corruption and more--all in a Windy City fortnight in 1919. Employing a zigzag style throughout his entertaining, troubling narrative, Krist corrals several plot threads: the fiery, deadly crash of the blimp Wingfoot Express into a Loop bank building, the disappearance of and frantic search for a little (white) girl, a violent race riot that transformed the South Side into a war zone (it took the National Guard to restore order), a looming transit strike that threatened to put more angry people on the street, assorted ethnic clashes, the emergence of crisis-oriented journalism and the vicious political struggle between Chicago Major Big Bill Thompson and Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden. Krist also includes regular commentary by a young woman diarist, Emily Frankenstein (whose father, incredibly, was named Victor--and was a doctor), who pops up too often to offer banalities about her life. The blimp crash seemed to ignite kindling that was already smoldering, and soon the city blazed with riot and fury. Snipers and hooligans abounded; cops struggled (though not enough, claimed some aggrieved black residents); politicians lied, changed the subject and tried to cover their asses. A suspect in the abduction waxed arrogant--at first; Ring Lardner, Carl Sandburg, Edna Ferber, H.L. Mencken and others weighed in. A grim but eager narrative that delivers vivid reading.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.