Examines the life and career of the New York attorney general and governor. He is tactically brilliant, charismatic, yet also dark, brooding, and vindictive. He is an old-school boss who rules by fear, even as he puts himself forward as the new, 21st-century Democrat. In many ways his story is iconic: scion of a political family, the Italian-American governor's son who aims for nothing less than the presidency. A cabinet secretary at 39, he ran for...

As mayor of his native Yonkers, the third largest city in New York, Alfred Delbello defied an ingrained, corrupt, inefficient patronage system to bring fiscal sanity and better living conditions to Yonkers' citizens. Delbello then became the first Democrat to be elected Westchester County Executive, where he balanced fiscal conservatism and an innovative approach to funding with improvements to health care, the environment, the criminal justice system,...

Documents the political education and motivations of Theodore Roosevelt from his early days as an assemblyman in Albany and examines how his career evolved from a young political novice to the master reformer that led him to the presidency.

A flavorful account of New York City politics during the 1920s Jazz Age centering on the intersecting careers of the city's popular "Night Mayor," Jimmy Walker, and the state's patrician governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mitgang's extensive use of newspaper quotes and legal transcripts helps paint vivid portraits of Walker, Roosevelt and the large cast of characters who played a part in Walker's fall from grace and Roosevelt's meteoric rise to four-term...