Chicago's Reckoning confronts the complicated history of race, politics, and policing in Chicago through a study of Richard J. and Richard M. Daley's terms in mayoral office. The book uses a study of police misconduct and political corruption in Chicago to develop an exclusion-containment theory of legal cynicism that explains ongoing problems with urban policing. Chicago's Reckoning rewrites our sociological understanding of power, corruption, crime, and culture. The authors weave together an unprecedented range of data with Studs Turkel-like storytelling to reveal how Chicago's political machine brutally leveraged criminal law to simultaneously advance the agenda of the White political elites while also excluding and containing Black neighborhoods. Understanding a neighborhood's history of exclusion and containment, the authors argue, should be a central explanatory mechanism in any theory of urban inequality.