Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

â€œGolwayâ€™s revisionist take is a useful reminder of the unmatched ingenuity of American politics.â€â€•Wall Street Journal
History casts Tammany Hall as shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft and patronage personified by notoriously crooked characters. In his groundbreaking work Machine Made, journalist and historian Terry Golway dismantles these stereotypes, focusing on the many benefits of machine politics for marginalized immigrants. As thousands sought refuge from Irelandâ€™s potato famine, the very question of who would be included under the protection of American democracy was at stake. Tammanyâ€™s transactional politics were at the heart of crucial social reformsâ€•such as child labor laws, workersâ€™ compensation, and minimum wagesâ€• and Golway demonstrates that American political history cannot be understood without Tammanyâ€™s profound contribution. Culminating in FDRâ€™s New Deal, Machine Made reveals how Tammany Hall â€œchanged the role of governmentâ€•for the better to millions of disenfranchised recent American arrivalsâ€ (New York Observer). 8 pages of illustrations

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics