Machine Made; Tammany Hall and The Creation of Modern American Politics

New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation [A Division of W. W. Norton & Company], 2014. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xxiv, 367, [7] pages. Frontis illustration. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Terry Golway is a Kean University professor, historian, author, and a journalist, having served as a columnist and editorial board member for The New York Times and a long-time editor and writer at The New York Observer. Golway teaches history at Kean University and is the curator of the university's John T. Kean Center for American History. In 2010 Golway discovered a historic early census count predating the creation of the United States at Liberty Hall National Historic Landmark at Kean. He is the author of several books on American and Irish history. Golway is an occasional op-ed columnist for The New York Times. He served as a political reporter, city editor and columnist for the pink paper, for which he still writes the periodic piece. Derived from a Kirkus review: The story of Tammany Hall, a fraternal organization founded in the late 1700s as a "voice of the common man," mirrors the story of the Irish Catholics in New York City, who had to crack the Anglo-Protestant political order in order to make their way. So argues journalist Golway. Irish Catholic leaders in New York challenged the Protestant elite by pushing back against nativist animosity. As the Irish population of the city swelled from the Great Famine, Tammany embraced and enfranchised these unfortunate masses. The election of William R. Grace, the first Irish Catholic immigrant, as mayor of New York City in 1880 was a watershed. The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire of 1911 galvanized Tammany's more promising reform-minded leaders like Robert Wagner and Al Smith to urge for regulatory legislation that inspired Francis Perkins and, later, Franklin Roosevelt. A work that readjusts Tammany's reputation from corruption to a crusader for the downtrodden.