NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic true crime story of the most successful bootlegger in American history and the murder that shocked the nation, from the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy“Gatsby-era noir at its best.”—Erik LarsonAn ID Book Club Selection • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST HISTORY BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIANIn the early … • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST HISTORY BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN
In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he’s a multi-millionaire. The press calls him “King of the Bootleggers,” writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand-new cars for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States.
Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt’s bosses at the Justice Department hired her right out of law school, assuming she’d pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It’s a decision with deadly consequences. With the fledgling FBI on the case, Remus is quickly imprisoned for violating the Volstead Act. Her husband behind bars, Imogene begins an affair with Dodge. Together, they plot to ruin Remus, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government–and that can only end in murder.
Combining deep historical research with novelistic flair, The Ghosts of Eden Park is the unforgettable, stranger-than-fiction story of a rags-to-riches entrepreneur and a long-forgotten heroine, of the excesses and absurdities of the Jazz Age, and of the infinite human capacity to deceive.
Praise for The Ghosts of Eden Park
“An exhaustively researched, hugely entertaining work of popular history that . . . exhumes a colorful crew of once-celebrated characters and restores them to full-blooded life. . . . [Abbott’s] métier is narrative nonfiction and—as this vibrant, enormously readable book makes clear—she is one of the masters of the art.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Satisfyingly sensational and thoroughly researched.”—The Columbus Dispatch
“Absorbing . . . a Prohibition-era page-turner.”—Chicago Tribune
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Prose so rich and evocative, you feel you’re living the story—and full of lots of “I didn’t know that” moments. Gatsby-era noir at its best.
Few authors write as colorfully and compellingly about the past as Karen Abbott, particularly when bad behavior is involved. In The Ghosts of Eden Park, we meet the audacious, larger-than-life ‘King of the Bootleggers,’ George Remus, and the equally fascinating women who will seal his fate. Sex and greed, corruption and revenge, oceans of illegal booze—Abbott’s action-packed, riveting tale has it all.
This was a very entertaining – if a bit overly detailed at times – tale about Prohibition-era America. It’s a time-frame that doesn’t get as much attention as it seems like it should. It was, after all, a time of capital-C Characters, on both sides of the law, as well as money, drama, crime, and secrets – normally all topics that lend themselves to fabulous storytelling. In Abbott’s latest we get all of that in spades, including a fascinating peek behind the curtain of women in early 20th century American politics. It was a fascinating tale of wine, women and song and I enjoyed it – mostly.
I must admit that there were several points during which I found the story to lag rather substantially though. This seems to happen a lot in narrative non-fiction that includes courtroom drama. I think authors get overly enthused by the possibility of *actual*, transcript, dialogue in the form of the back-and-forth of attorney-witness interaction and feel compelled to include as much as possible. While I appreciate historical veracity, rarely is a trial as exciting as people think – there is a LOT of monotonous repetition (intentionally), and reading large swathes of it slows the pacing to the detriment of the story even if to the benefit of the historical record.
Still, Abbott has done a great job painting a portrait of a time and place that were dashing, violent, and full of enough hidden agendas to satisfy readers who enjoy a good twisty tale. If tighter editing could have evened out the pacing a bit, the narrative portions of the story (especially early on) more than hit their marks and it was an enjoyable read on the whole.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my review copy.
Karen Abbott has long shown a formidable talent for rescuing Gothic stories from the noirish margins of American history. In The Ghosts of Eden Park, she’s done it once again. Here is a high-proof narrative from the Age of Excess, populated with real-life gangsters and flapper girls, but also with plenty of surprising characters who cut against type. This Prohibition-era tale of trapdoors and false bottoms, of wicked pleasures and brilliant deceptions, springs to life on the page—and has Hollywood written all over it.
This nonfiction accounting of the remarkable life of George Remus reads like fiction–page-turning, evocative, surprising. The past is definitely not as proper as we like to pretend, and this book brings that realization to delicious, fascinating life!
A stellar achievement . . . Like a skilled bartender in an underground speakeasy, Karen Abbott expertly blends superb storytelling with immersive historical detail to create a heady cocktail of bootlegging, betrayal, and blood-dark passion. So vivid is the world she conjures that I could viscerally taste the whiskey and smell the sweat—and hear the gunshots too. The Ghosts of Eden Park has that bittersweet brilliance of all great books: though I couldn’t stop turning the pages, I never wanted it to end.
Living in Chicago, you don’t hear of any Prohibition gangsters other than Johnny Torrio, Jim Collissmo, Bugs Moran, and Al Capone (the first three being dwarfed by Capone). Being an absolute geek about anything from that era I was really interested to read about George Remus, thinking I wouldn’t find anything likeable nor find myself sympathetic to his killing his second wife, Imogene. Could not have been more wrong as to the second part.
In a nutshell, Remus is a self made man, child of immigrants, and power hungry ass. He starts his working career as a gopher for his uncle’s pharmacy, becomes a lawyer, then turns to bootlegging. He ditches his first wife and their daughter and takes up with a salesgirl and her daughter. The Feds arrest him & send him to prison, during which time the second wife takes up with a Fed (Frank Dodge)(who is subsequently fired from the Department of Justice), and the two of them rob Remus blind. When Remus finds out, he goes into this blind rage every time the couple is mentioned, and shoots the second wife at point blank range the morning their divorce trial is set to begin. You’d think he’d end up back in prison, right? Nope. He DEFENDS HIMSELF, pleading temporary insanity and WINS! Even though the Feds have three medical professionals testify that there was no way he was insane. The tale of Remus and Imogene doesn’t end with her death; Edens Park in Cincinnati is supposedly one of the hottest paranormal spots in the country, and folks have witnessed a sobbing woman, dressed in black, at the spot where Imogene was killed.
I realize I’ve given the entire plot away, but this is a Cliff’s Notes version of the Cliff’s Notes. Imogene Remus takes the cake when it comes to scheming, greedy, second wives, forbidding Remus to have any contact with his biological daughter. Bish went so far as to strip their mansion down to the bare walls, removing chandeliers and other furniture that was attached to the walls. She puts contracts out on Remus and even one of the hit men was “oh h*** no, I can’t do that.” When I got to the part where Remus shoots her, I was disappointed he didn’t pull out another gun.
As if this wasn’t enough of a tale to keep you interested, the book includes details on one of America’s most corrupt presidents (Warren G. Harding) and some of his cronies, a very young and power hungry J. Edgar Hoover (head of the new.y formed FBI), the son of former president and Supreme Court Justice William Taft, and the second female Assistant Attorney General, Mabel Willenbrandt.
I loved this soap opera of a book, and hope someone makes a movie out of it. It would make great reading for a high school or college history class.
I was raised in the area of Cincinnati where Remus lived, so I knew his name and that he was quite a character, but no details. Very interesting, new a lot of areas that played a part in the book.
It’s an amazing story that reads like fiction, but it’s all true and scrupulously documented. It’s of particular interest to residents of the Cincinnati area, where most of it took place.
A great book about Prohibition and its enforcement. Can hardly believe it is non-fiction!
Amazon Vine Review
This was an intriguing look at the life of George Remus aka King of the Bootleggers. It is during the Prohibition period that he sees money in taking control of alcohol and along the way he finds the love of his life. He finds himself in a life of luxury when it all begins to crumble under him. This was a fascinating look at the Jazz age, Prohibition, the rise and fall of one man, a crazy double cross on top of a double cross, and murder. A well written true crime story that really made you feel for all the people involved.
The Ghosts of Eden Park is a story so strange, so salacious, it nearly defies belief. Exquisitely crafted and expertly rendered, this book weds high drama to rigorous scholarship. Karen Abbott has mastered the art of telling true stories as riveting and suspenseful as fiction.
In Karen Abbott’s hands, the saga of bootlegger George Remus is more than just a rollicking tale of money, obsession, and murder (although it is certainly that), it’s nonfiction’s answer to The Great Gatsby and an instant classic. Scrupulously researched and packed with jaw-dropping details, The Ghosts of Eden Park is the most thrilling narrative I have read in a long time.
In The Ghosts of Eden Park, historian Karen Abbott gifts us with a story of sex, madness, and murder in Jazz Age America that is as intoxicating as a hit of bootlegged bourbon. In Abbott’s hands, truth is not only stranger than fiction, it’s also a hell of a lot more thrilling. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.
I received an advance ebook via NetGalley.
I never cease to be amazed by the innovations and machinations perpetuated by bootleggers during Prohibition, and wow does this book bring an incredible drama to light. George Remus was a corporate powerhouse out of Cincinnati. Once a lawyer known for courtroom histrionics, he switched his focus to dominating the illicit liquor trade throughout the Midwest. He accumulated incredible wealth and prestige, masterminding some third of bootleg operations within America, and becoming one of the largest employers in the entire region. He also acquired a bride: Imogene, who soon became his business partner. But after Remus is nabbed by the Feds and sent to lock-up in Atlanta, Imogene begins an affair with a Prohibition agent and begins to systemically unravel her husband’s luxurious household and his business operation–and unravel Remus’s very sanity. He had never been a stable man to begin with, and Imogene’s betrayal sends him over the edge… resulting in murder and one of the most sensational trails of the era and a legal and moral test of “guilty by reason of insanity.”
Also, I absolutely loved reading about Mabel Walker Willebrandt, U.S. Assistant Attorney General throughout the 1920s. She was the very definition of a woman surviving by grit and wit within a man’s world. I need to read more about her.
This book is astonishing. It reads with the ease and intensity of a thriller, in part because the author’s fantastic research included full dialogue from all of the major players. People speak in their own words, including Remus, who had a tendency to speak of himself in the third person. As a research geek myself, I can only respect in and be delighted by another author going through such intense labor, and it works to great success.
I think my only complaint is that the book ended up far shorter than I anticipated. The ebook’s content actually ended at 64%, with the rest of the pages consisting of footnotes and bibliography.
I highly recommend this read for anyone interested in the period of Prohibition.
Karen Abbott fans, rejoice! If you’ve been waiting eagerly for Abbott’s follow-up to the amazing Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy — I know I have — your wait is finally over with this slam-bang investigation into the life of the bootlegger who inspired the character of Jay Gatsby and the woman assigned to bring him down.
A Tale of Bootlegging, Betrayal, and Murder Diluted in the Telling
The Ghosts of Eden Park is set in the Jazz Age in the United States. It was a time of great change—women received the right to vote; fashion, music, and social norms were being transformed; and alcohol became illegal. Into this setting, insert George Remus, a lawyer turned bootlegger who quickly amassed a vast fortune by finding loopholes in the new Prohibition laws. Opposing Remus was Mabel Walker Willebrandt, appointed as US Assistant Attorney General with responsibility for enforcing Prohibition. Fresh out of law school, few expected her to upset the benign indifference shown by most politicians; they were wrong. Remus was convicted and sentenced to prison. His second wife, Imogene, betrayed him with one of Willebrandt’s agents, Franklin Dodge, and they stole much of his fortune. And then, the histrionics Remus showed in the courtroom became more prevalent and much more violent. But was it insanity, or just a ruse to defend himself in his own trial for killing Imogene?
With all this grist for a spellbinding tale, I expected one; unfortunately, it never quite materializes. The text and dialog pulled from court records and other documents reflect the style of the time, e.g., somewhat wooden compared to today’s standards. But that same stilted feel continues into the rest of the book. Perhaps that was intentional, but it reduces the pace to the point of plodding. The story is not presented succinctly. As an example, during Remus’s murder trial, several witnesses were called to testify about the night Remus discovered that his mansion had been stripped of its valuables. Each witness, however, gives a different date. And after several pages of this same story, the author reveals that the lawyers were trying to prove Remus was staging his ‘discovery’ of the theft over and over, so he could fly into a rage at his wife’s betrayal for each new audience. One well-written paragraph could have replaced several pages of repetition. The basic sequence of events is also confusing, when segments from court transcripts representing a different time are inserted between chapters. And digressions into the personal and professional lives of characters only loosely related to the story feel like filler.
I did enjoy the insight the book provided on several tangential topics—the excesses of Remus’s Gatsby-esque lifestyle, the treatment of the rich in the penal system, the concept of insanity in the legal system, among others. And I came to greatly admire the stamina and vision of a past US Assistant Attorney General. To accomplish what Wllibrandt did during the Prohibition Era was truly amazing. But as for a riveting story of betrayal and murder in the matter of George Remus? That was difficult to find.
I was given a free copy of this book. I elected to write this candid review.
Add this one this your list. It’s coming Aug. 6th. Loved every word–stranger than fiction. It’s the true story of George Remus, America’s most successful bootlegger and real-life inspiration for Jay Gatsby. Intrigue, love triangles, murder. Abbott at her best!!!