Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York
$21.00 online at Bookshop.org
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 forty thousand prostitutes, illegal casinos, and all-night dance halls. The Harvard-educated reformer tried to wipe out vice and corruption. He went head-to-head with Tammany Hall, took midnight rambles looking for derelict cops, banned Sunday barroom drinking, and tried to convince two million New Yorkers to enjoy wholesome family fun. The city rebelled; cartoonists lampooned him; his own party abandoned him; Roosevelt never backed down. Island of Vice delivers the narrative history of his embattled tenure, pitting the seedy against the saintly and the city against its would-be savior.
Genres: True Crime
ISBN-13: 9780767926195
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