Main Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York

Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York

Name: Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York
Rating: 5.0 (4 reviews)
ISBN: 9780385534024

Richard Zacks

5.0 / 5.0

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In the 1890s, young cocksure Theodore Roosevelt, years before the White House, was appointed police commissioner of corrupt, pleasure-loving New York, then teeming with 40,000 prostitutes, illegal casinos and all-night dance halls. The Harvard-educated Roosevelt, with a reformer’s zeal, tried to wipe out the city’s vice and corruption. He went head-to-head with Tammany Hall, took midnight rambles looking for derelict cops, banned barroom drinking on Sundays and tried to convince 2 million New Yorkers to enjoy wholesome family fun. The city rebelled big time; cartoonists lampooned him on the front page; his own political party abandoned him but Roosevelt never backed down. Island of Vice delivers a rollicking narrative history of Roosevelt’s embattled tenure, pitting the seedy against the saintly, and the city against its would-be savior.

Request Code : ZLIBIO3754630

Categories:

Year:

2012

Publisher:

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Language:

English

Pages:

550

ISBN 10:

2011028586