Rogues and Redeemers
When Politics Was King in Irish Boston
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling coauthor of Black Mass, a behind-the-scenes portrait of the Irish power brokers who forged and fractured twentieth-century Boston.
Rogues and Redeemers tells the hidden story of Boston politics--the cold-blooded ward bosses, the smoke-filled rooms, the larger-than-life pols who became national figures: Honey Fitz, the crafty stage Irishman and grandfather to a president; the pugilistic Rascal King, Michael Curley; the hectored Kevin White who tried to hold the city together during the busing crisis; and Ray Flynn, the Southie charmer who was truly the last hurrah for Irish-American politics in the city.
For almost a century, the Irish dominated Boston politics with their own unique, clannish brand of coercion and shaped its future for good and ill. Former Boston Globe investigative reporter Gerard O'Neill takes the reader through the entire journey from the famine ships arriving in Massachusetts Bay to the wresting of power away from the Brahmins of Beacon Hill to the Title I wars of attrition over housing to the rending of the city over busing to the Boston of today--which somehow through it all became a modern, revitalized city, albeit with a growing divide between the haves and have-nots.
Sweeping in its history and intimate in its details, Rogues and Redeemers echoes all the great themes of The Power Broker and Common Ground and should take its place on that esteemed shelf as a classic, definitive epic of a city.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist O'Neill (Black Mass, co-authored with Dick Lehr) is not for the politically faint of heart. In this encyclopedic take on Bostonian elections from the late 19th century to the modern era, and associated scandals, civic issues, and cultural collisions, O'Neill focuses on the city's Dickensian crop of political figures. Among those brought to vivid life are two dueling mayors, the smooth-talking Honey Fitz and the pugnacious James Michael Curley; the ward boss Martin Lomasney, known as "Mahatma" for his impartial ways; and the corrupt attorney Dan Coakley, a "Merlin of the defense bar," who specialized in a sexual entrapment scheme known as "the badger game." Tracing Boston's development through its mayoral administrations also enables O'Neill to survey hot-button issues, including a revitalization plan that leveled low-income neighborhoods, and forced busing to integrate public schools. The narrative is most dynamic when O'Neill expands the discussion to include the social, economic, and national context, but he too often relies on name-checking and score-keeping a game that will please political junkies, but be lost on novices. Much of the book reads like stitched-together news articles: the facts are sound and the prose tight, but events are recapped without deeper analysis or reflection.
Customer Reviews
Such a great read
The writing is superb. The storytelling is excellent. The way he uses the different characters to paint a scenic picture of how modern Boston came to be is fascinating. Learned a lot and could not put it down. I think this book could become this generations history of Boston bible....