Rogues and redeemers
Subtitle: when politics was king in Irish Boston
By: Gerard O'Neill
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Crown Publishers
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 401
ISBN-13: 9780307405364
Subjects: Politics and government; Irish Americans; Political culture; Family relationships; Politicians; Biography; History
Description: This book is a behind-the-scenes portrait of the Irish power brokers who forged and fractured twentieth-century Boston. It 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. It includes 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. The author, a former Boston Globe investigative reporter 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Famine's progeny; title: Shawn A Boo; title: The good shepherd; title: Himself; title: The badger's game; title: Whispering Johnny; title: All or nothing; title: Baby faced assassin; title: I am a legend; title: Whither Boston; title: Maybe not Wendell from Worcester; title: Halloween massacre; title: Losing ground; title: Still broke.