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Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York
Contributor(s): Zacks, Richard (Author)
ISBN: 0767926196     ISBN-13: 9780767926195
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
OUR PRICE:   $19.95  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: September 2012
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States - State & Local - Middle Atlantic (dc, De, Md, Nj, Ny, Pa)
- History | United States - 19th Century
- Political Science | Law Enforcement
Dewey: 363.230
Physical Information: 1.1" H x 5" W x 7.9" (0.95 lbs) 464 pages
Themes:
- Chronological Period - 1851-1899
- Locality - New York, N.Y.
- Geographic Orientation - New York
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

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.