Dirty Waters: Confessions of Chicago's Last Harbor Boss (Chicago Visions and Revisions)

About this book

A wry no-holds-barred memoir of Nelsons time controlling some of Chicagos most beautiful spots while facing some of its ugliest traditions. In 1987 the city of Chicago hired a former radical college chaplain to clean up rampant corruption on the waterfront. R. J. Nelson thought he was used to the darker side of the lawhe had been followed by federal agents and wiretapped due to his antiwar stances in the sixtiesbut nothing could prepare him for the wretched bog that constituted the world of a Harbor Boss. Dirty Waters is the wry no-holds-barred memoir of Nelsons time controlling some of the citys most beautiful spots while facing some of its ugliest traditions. Nelson takes us through Chicagos beloved blue spaces and deep into the citys political morass revealing the different moralities underlining three mayoral administrations and navigating the gritty mechanisms of the citys political machine. Ultimately Dirty Waters is a tale of morality of what it takes to be a force for good in the world and what struggles come from trying to stay ethically afloat in a sea of corruption.