Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics PDF Author: Terry Golway
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871407922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
“Golway’s revisionist take is a useful reminder of the unmatched ingenuity of American politics.”—Wall Street Journal History casts Tammany Hall as shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft and patronage personified by notoriously crooked characters. In his groundbreaking work Machine Made, journalist and historian Terry Golway dismantles these stereotypes, focusing on the many benefits of machine politics for marginalized immigrants. As thousands sought refuge from Ireland’s potato famine, the very question of who would be included under the protection of American democracy was at stake. Tammany’s transactional politics were at the heart of crucial social reforms—such as child labor laws, workers’ compensation, and minimum wages— and Golway demonstrates that American political history cannot be understood without Tammany’s profound contribution. Culminating in FDR’s New Deal, Machine Made reveals how Tammany Hall “changed the role of government—for the better to millions of disenfranchised recent American arrivals” (New York Observer).

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics PDF Author: Terry Golway
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871407922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book

Book Description
“Golway’s revisionist take is a useful reminder of the unmatched ingenuity of American politics.”—Wall Street Journal History casts Tammany Hall as shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft and patronage personified by notoriously crooked characters. In his groundbreaking work Machine Made, journalist and historian Terry Golway dismantles these stereotypes, focusing on the many benefits of machine politics for marginalized immigrants. As thousands sought refuge from Ireland’s potato famine, the very question of who would be included under the protection of American democracy was at stake. Tammany’s transactional politics were at the heart of crucial social reforms—such as child labor laws, workers’ compensation, and minimum wages— and Golway demonstrates that American political history cannot be understood without Tammany’s profound contribution. Culminating in FDR’s New Deal, Machine Made reveals how Tammany Hall “changed the role of government—for the better to millions of disenfranchised recent American arrivals” (New York Observer).

King of the Bowery

King of the Bowery PDF Author: Richard F. Welch
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143843183X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
King of the Bowery is the first full-length biography of Timothy D. "Big Tim" Sullivan, the archetypal Tammany Hall leader who dominated New York City politics—and much of its social life—from 1890 to 1913. A poor Irish kid from the Five Points who rose through ambition, shrewdness, and charisma to become the most powerful single politician in New York, Sullivan was quick to perceive and embrace the shifting demographics of downtown New York, recruiting Jewish and Italian newcomers to his largely Irish machine to create one of the nation's first multiethnic political organizations. Though a master of the personal, paternalistic, and corrupt politics of the late nineteenth century, Sullivan paradoxically embraced a variety of progressive causes, especially labor and women's rights, anticipating many of the policies later pursued by his early acquaintances and sometimes antagonists Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Drawing extensively on contemporary sources, King of the Bowery offers a rich, readable, and authoritative potrayal of Gotham on the cusp of the modern age, as refracted through the life of a man who exemplified much of it. "... a necessary book for anyone unsatisfied by the usual histories of Irish-American urban political machines. ... The Irish-American boss has rarely been awarded the careful appraisal of the kind that Welch ... gives Sullivan. ... But caveat lector: you don't have to be Irish American or a New Yorker or a Democrat to enjoy this book. All you have to be is interested in a well-told story that is also a first-rate work of history." — Peter Quinn, Commonweal

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall PDF Author: William L. Riordon
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486841936
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 83

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Book Description
This volume presents the candid wit and wisdom of George Washington Plunkitt (1842-1924), a longtime New York City ward boss and Tammany Hall player. Plunkitt, a cynically honest practitioner of machine politics, reveals the secrets to the political success of Tammany Hall operatives, freely discussing his patronage-based appointments and exercise of power for personal gain.

Thomas Nast

Thomas Nast PDF Author: Fiona Deans Halloran
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807835870
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
"Thomas Nast (1840-1902), the founding father of American political cartooning, is perhaps best known for his cartoons portraying political parties as the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant. Nast's legacy also includes a trove of other political cartoons, his successful attack on the machine politics of Tammany Hall in 1871, and his wildly popular illustrations of Santa Claus for Harper's Weekly magazine. In this thoroughgoing and lively biography, Fiona Deans Halloran interprets his work, explores his motivations and ideals, and illuminates the lasting legacy of Nast's work on American political culture"--

Boss Tweed

Boss Tweed PDF Author: Kenneth D. Ackerman
Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
ISBN: 9780786714353
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
A lively account of the life of a New York legend traces the rise of Boss Tweed, the corrupt party boss who controlled New York politics through a combination of corruption, bribery, and coercion until his own over-reaching destroyed him.

The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age PDF Author: Mark Twain
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 628

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Book Description


Belle Moskowitz

Belle Moskowitz PDF Author: Elisabeth Israels Perry
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555534240
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Now available in a new edition, this well-crafted feminist biography restores to history the career of a pioneering activist who achieved unprecedented influence in American politics.

Envisioning Freedom

Envisioning Freedom PDF Author: Cara Caddoo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674966864
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In Cara Caddoo’s perspective-changing study, African Americans emerge as pioneers of cinema from the 1890s to 1920s. But as it gained popularity, black cinema also became controversial. Black leaders demanded self-representation and an end to cinematic mischaracterizations which, they charged, violated the civil rights of African Americans.

The History of Tammany Hall

The History of Tammany Hall PDF Author: Gustavus Myers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description


Beauty in the City

Beauty in the City PDF Author: Robert A. Slayton
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438466412
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Presents a major new interpretation of the Ashcan School of Art, arguing that these artists made the working-class city at the turn of the century a subject for beautiful art. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Ashcan School of Art blazed onto the art scene, introducing a revolutionary vision of New York City. In contrast to the elite artists who painted the upper class bedecked in finery, in front of magnificent structures, or the progressive reformers who photographed the city as a slum, hopeless and full of despair, the Ashcan School held the unique belief that the industrial working-class city was a fit subject for great art. In Beauty in the City, Robert A. Slayton illustrates how these artists portrayed the working classes with respect and gloried in the drama of the subways and excavation sites, the office towers, and immigrant housing. Their art captured the emerging metropolis in all its facets, with its potent machinery and its class, ethnic, and gender issues. By exposing the realities of this new, modern America through their art—expressed in what they chose to draw, not in how they drew it—they created one of the great American art forms. “A delight for the eyes, a treat for city lovers, and a fine example of how historians can use art, Beauty in the City will enrich such fields as urban history, art history, the history of New York City, and America in the twentieth century. Robert Slayton has identified a group of artists who saw in the gritty details of city life real beauty and social meaning.” — Hasia R. Diner, author of Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way “A century ago, the Ashcan painters created an art that was of, by, and for urban Americans—in all their exhilarating pluralism. Robert Slayton analyzes and celebrates their accomplishment in a work that combines brilliant scholarship and a profound passion for his subject. To his great credit, he reveals ‘the beauty already there.’” — Michael Kazin, author of War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914–1918 “With great narrative skill and finely drawn characters, Robert Slayton paints a vivid picture of New York and the art world in the early twentieth century. He reminds us that these artists and the city they inhabited continue to influence our perspective—about class, about gender, about race—a century later. This book is a wonderful, vibrant look at a forgotten part of our history.” — Terry Golway, author of Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics