Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: The Annotated Edition

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, first published in 1905, provides an extraordinary account of the political corruption and profiteering of George Washington Plunkitt, a long-time district leader in the New York Democratic Party's political machine in Manhattan. Reporter William L. Riordon immortalized Plunkitt's banter and bluster by reorganizing the raconteur's impromptu speeches, conversations, and interviews into discourses published first in New York newspapers and later in this book. Here, for the first time, Kevin W. Hula and Douglas B. Harris present a fully annotated edition of Riordon's work. A new introductory chapter and introductions for each of Plunkitt's discourses highlight the book's place in American political history and the machine era in which Plunkitt lived. Plunkitt describes Tammany's operations, how machine politicians profited, and his views on why political reformers were curses on America. This annotated edition of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall makes the classic political tale accessible for a new generation of readers, students of politics, and scholars of the progressive era.