I love Chicago's sordid and interesting past. It is filled with so many eccentric characters, and this book presents many of those characters, particularly the Everleigh sisters. While reading this book, I continually found myself "rooting" for the madam sisters, expecting something to happen to change my mind. That didn't happen. While obviously prostitution is wrong, the sisters make an effort to at least present it in a new fashion for a different type of client. They are probably some of the best entrepreneurs of the 20th century. They just happened to run a business that was illegal.

I do believe there are some loose ends in this nonfiction book that needed some more work, namely some conclusion to the White Slavery accusations and the work done by the prosecutors on that front. I am unclear whether there really was a problem regarding white slavery. Abbott seems to accuse Prosecutor Roe of creating the problem to further his career, while also including antecdotes that seem to indicate there indeed a problem. My club and I felt there was not a satisfying conclusion to this section of the book.

Otherwise, great choice! Lots of fun little stories about the sisters and their butterflies, and we learned a lot about prostitution, Chicago, and the Underworld.

Our club is in the Chicago area and wanted to pick a book about Chicago. It was an okay read. We thought the narrative was somewhat choppy and the information, while interesting, was not a "page-turner." It was, however, sort of cool to be reading the book at the same time the Mann Act was in the news because of the Eliot Spitzer affair.