| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875–1920. By Jeffrey S. Adler. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. 357 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-674-02149-5.)

"Men who crack the heads of animals all day," Upton Sinclair mused in The Jungle (1906), "seem to get into the habit, and to practice on their friends, and even on their families" (p. 8). Early twentieth-century observers marveled at the lethal culture of Chicago, the Midwestern metropolis Lincoln Steffens dubbed "first in violence, deepest in dirt." Had the muckraker looked south or west, he would have found a few towns that were even more violent. But Chicago was the big story: America's deadliest major city. Between 1875 and 1920, Chicago's homicide rate—killings per 100,000 residents—surged from 2.25 to nearly 10. All told, the police logged 5,645 homicides. Jeffrey S. Adler has studied every one, tracking each case into city newspapers, court files, and prison records. With a coroner's stomach and a social historian's analytical tools, Adler has written a gripping history of everyday life and violent death in industrial Chicago.

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