Jack Beatty is a senior editor of the Atlantic Monthly, a commentator for NPR, and the author of The World According to Peter Drucker. He lives in Boston.
Curley is now known principally through Edwin O'Connor's novel, The Last Hurrah (1956). Atlantic editor Beatty writes the first biography in 43 years of a man who over the course of a half-century in politics was four times mayor of Boston, once governor of Massachusetts, twice a congressional representative, and twice a prisoner in jail. Much of this portrait, developed in part through interviews with Curley's son, is familiar in legend: Beatty details Curley's political genius, compassion, verbal gifts, and ability to touch his people, Boston's Irish. Beatty also describes Curley's megalomania, his role in the city's economic decline, and ``the labyrinthine ingenuity of his graft.'' Indicting Curley here, praising him there, Beatty's assessment is fair-minded, his research solid, his asides on today's political parallels enlightening, and his style appropriate to a flamboyant subject. For all Boston-area libraries and for libraries whose patrons are interested in politics, cities, or Irish Americans.--Robert F. Nardini, North Chichester, N.H.
This delightful biography presents the notorious governor, congressman and four-term mayor of Boston as a devout Catholic, devoted husband and father of nine children, while describing how his constituents supported his politics of ethnic and religious polarization and winked at his graft. (Oct.)
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