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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Warren Sloat. A Battle For The Soul of New York: Tammany Hall, Police Corruption, Vice, and Reverend Charles Parkhurst's Crusade Against Them, 1892–1895. New York: Cooper Square Press. 2002. Pp. xxi, 482. $27.95.
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| Before reading this book, I was inclined to dismiss the Reverend Charles Parkhurst as just another in the long line of what George Washington Plunkitt derided as "morning glories." In Warren Sloat's fascinating account, however, Parkhurst emerges as a savvy politician, canny campaigner, and charismatic leader who combined high moral dudgeon with a realistic view of human frailties, genuine empathy for the plight of the lower social orders, and an instinct for pragmatism and coalition building. Parkhurst and his Society for the Prevention of Crime forced respectable and complacent New Yorkers to glimpse the vice, corruption, and brutality that lay just beneath the surface, and to comprehend the intertwined network of policemen, politicians, businessmen, and vice merchants that sustained it. |
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