Digitized Book of the Week

http://www.archive.org/details/ilcostumeanticoe82ferr
View the Flip Book. View the PDF.

Giulio Ferrario (1767-1847), of Milan, was an intellectual, publisher, printer and librarian. His monumental work Il costume antico e moderno contains over 1,500 hand-colored plates depicting clothing from the classical period through the early 1800s, as well as many architectural drawings and engravings. The University of Illinois Library recently digitized all 15 volumes of this work that are held in its collection. View all digitized volumes in this series.

http://www.archive.org/details/chicagogangwarsi00rock
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According to the My Al Capone Museum website, this week’s featured book was first published anonymously in 1930 because the author, Chicago reporter Harold “Hal Andrews” feared reprisals from the Chicago mob, and probably with good reason. The book contains gory crime scene photos taken at the sites of some of the most notorious Chicago gangland killings of the 1920s. (Warning! Not for the squeamish!) No less a big boy than Al Capone, who is believed to have ordered the notorious 1929 St. Valentine’s Day massacre of a rival Chicago crime gang, reportedly ordered his minions to confiscate every copy of “X Marks the Spot” from Chicago newspaper stands. The University of Illinois' copy of "X Marks the Spot" bears the author's signature and the following inscription "Chicago, in her 100 years of progress, has borne many crosses, but none greater than the cross that marks the spot X."