Richard Zacks

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Description: When young Theodore Roosevelt was appointed police commissioner of New York City, he had the astounding gall to try to shut down the brothels, gambling joints, and after-hours saloons. This is the story of how TR took on Manhattan vice . . . and vice won.

In the 1890s, New York City was America’s financial, manufacturing, and entertainment capital, and also its preferred destination for sin, teeming with forty thousand prostitutes, glittery show more casinos, and all-night dives. Police cap­tains took hefty bribes to see nothing while reformers writhed in frustration.

In Island of Vice, Richard Zacks paints a vivid portrait of the lewd underbelly of 1890s New York, and of Theodore Roosevelt, the puritanical, cocksure police commissioner resolved to clean it up. Writing with great wit and zest, Zacks explores how young Roosevelt goes head to head with Tammany Hall, takes midnight rambles with muckraker Jacob Riis, and tries to convince two million New Yorkers to enjoy wholesome family fun. When Roosevelt’s crackdown succeeds too well, even his supporters turn on him, and TR discovers that New York loves its sin more than its salvation.

With cameos by Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, and a horde of very angry cops, Island of Vice is an unforgettable snap­shot of turn-of-the-century New York in all its seedy glory and a brilliant miniature of one of America’s most colorful presidents.


My Review: I admire Theodore Roosevelt. I wish there was a TR on today's political landscape: A wealthy man with a sense of reforming zeal, whose ruling passion isn't to accumulate more for himself but to make sure that the path to accumulating more is open to all, and to be sure that the greediest are checked from confiscating the outrageous percentages of national income that they feel entitled to.

Such a person isn't anywhere to be found today, or I am unaware of his or her existence.

Be that as it may, this book is a terrific piece of social history using TR's tenure as New York's Police Commissioner (actually president of the board of commissioners, which is awkward to type and say repeatedly) when “New York” meant Manhattan. It still does, really, but no longer legally since 1898. Manhattan was the Sin Capital of America, gawd bless it, as it was until about the 1980s. Now it's LA, a place with no character to speak of, and Sin is now international big business, Sin.com, instead of Miss Nettie's Hen and Chicks on Second Street.

Fighting to instill “morals” them as don't want to be moralized is, then as now, pointless. Making things more difficult for providers of sex, booze, and gambling drives the prices up and chokes off exactly none of the supply. No power on the planet, or above it, will choke off demand, and isn't it time to admit that? People are not gonna stop sinnin' and ain't nothin' gonna make 'em. So shut up about the stuff you don't like, quit passing expensive prohibitory laws that make no difference anyway, and tax the drug, sex, and gambling industries. Guaran-damn-tee you there will never again in history be a government spending deficit.

Roosevelt's tenure as Police Commissioner was marked by political failures galore, because then as now, where there's men there's prostitutes, booze, and gambling. Those interests are powerful politically, and then as now they bought up politicians like eggs...by the dozens. New York State is really two states: The sin-loving City and the appleknockin' church-goin' upstate that likes to pass laws to twit the City. But the Albany pols were and are owned by the corporate interests, and the profits of the City's various sins pay for the rest of the state's infrastructure, so the reforms and prohibitions are either toothless or weak-kneed. Why kill the goose? We need them golden eggs. So TR, a man of strong convictions and of astounding self-confidence, went up against the various political machines in New York City and State with an eye to stopping...yes, halting!...the illicit, forbidden, openly practiced vices that his Dutch Reformed Protestant sin-seein' soul recoiled from.

HA!

This was after TR's career as a minor Navy bureaucrat, and a would-be bestselling writer, had failed to take him to the heights he aspired to. The Navy, in that day and time, was a backwater posting as the United States wasn't in danger of fighting a war (that would change in a few years) and the world wasn't much in the habit of considering us as A Power. New York, his hometown, needed TR's energy and passion; it was assumed he'd follow the mold once he got there.

HA!

So Zacks has an oodle of material to work with, from the TR story and the role that his tenure as Police Commissioner played in it, to the history of vice (always entertaining!), to the gigantic pressures of the Gilded Age on the frayed fabric of society that led to the Progressive movement's eventual successes under—ahem!—the Roosevelt Administration to come. Corporate greed and wrongdoing were checked. Abuses of trust and fraud and graft were described and laws against them were passed and regulatory bodies to enforce those laws were created.

Under the watchful eye of a failed wealthy Republican Police Commissioner, whose inability to clean up his own hometown hardened something in him, and made him better able to face down US Steel, Standard Oil, AT&T, et alii.

This is the story, then, that Zacks has to work with, and he does a workmanlike job of drawing its strands together. His writing isn't extraordinary in either direction, his research skills are excellent, his eye and ear for what phrase or anecdote to pull from the immense torrent of printed sources at his disposal is very well-tuned.

But something is missing, a certain passion or connection to the story. Something juuuuust fails to take flight. Candice Millard, she of River of Doubt and Destiny of the Republic, blurbs this book by praising the story to the skies, and calling the book “rousing.” Ah...yes...the story is the star. In Millard's books aforementioned, there's no doubt whatever that she is telling a terrific story, but there's also no doubt that she's writing a wonderful book.

Zacks, with the best will in the world and a strong interest in the subject, is only telling a terrific story. show less

I feel like everyone knows about Captain Kidd at this point, by name or maybe even by reputation. I certainly thought I did, but this biography has even more to offer. Richard Zacks spares no detail in any aspect of Kidd's life in "The Pirate Hunter." What I learned from this was that Kidd was not the notorious pirate that history has made him out to be. In fact, compared to many he hardly fit the definition of one. Based out of New York City, Kidd was a married man, one of its wealthiest show more citizens, and unlike most, commanded a galley ship rather than a strictly sailing one. As a privateer, he was in possession of a proper Letter of Marque, but that is not to say he didn't encounter and work alongside a few pirates. Gossip and rumor dogged him for most of his career, despite his best attempts to stick to his assigned mission of hunting pirates. He may or may not have been aware of the hidden agenda of his sponsors back in London. But it was ultimately his swagger and arrogance that would be his undoing.

The only reason that this one didn't get 5 ⭐, is because as informative as it is, it gets pretty long-winded at times. It doesn't pertain to Kidd directly, but one more thing bothered me. When Zacks addresses Robert Culliford, who served with Kidd aboard a French privateer, he's adamant that the man was heterosexual. Most historians agree the man was gay or bisexual. But Zacks weakly attempts to describe Robert and his "great consort" Jon Swann as "best of friends." What I did appreciate was the inclusion of testimonies often overlooked that prove, if only a little, that Kidd did not deserve to be labeled a pirate for his actions. The East India Company, and rich Englishmen pulling the strings certainly had it out for him. Not exactly a "riotous bio" but this book definitely allowed me to re-evaluate my opinion of Kidd. I recommend it! show less

Since 1705, sailors had been falling prey to Basha Yussef and the Barbary pirates. Since the Revolution, the best that America could do was vaguely threaten, ransom or bribe. But in 1803, after the USS Philadelphia runs aground and its men are captured, enough was enough. Taking advantage of political instability, a plan emerges to put Yussef's younger brother, Hamet, on the throne. Failed diplomat William Eaton seeks to redeem himself and offers to lead an expedition. He finds Hamet in show more Egypt. This results in a plan for a 600 mile trek - with a combined force of 8 American marines, foreign mercenaries, and Bedouin tribesmen - to take Derne, conquer Bengazi, and finally march into Tripoli. At the same time, the U.S. navy moves with their own orders just as the foreign minister of Tripoli offers peace. So how would it end? Military might, a coup d'état, diplomacy or rebellion from within?

While I found this one compelling in a lot of ways -in the end I didn't care for it as much as Zacks' "The Pirate Hunter." It suffered from the same problems as the biography of John Paul Jones, particularly the "Only One" trope. "Slovenly" Jefferson, timid Madison, and placating Tobias Lear cannot hope to succeed without bull-headed, patriotic Eaton. The only man with the brass and the brains to save the day. Except this cliched image falls apart once the reader realizes how insufferable and mistrustful Eaton is, succeeding (sort of?) with sheer luck. Eaton is fearless and audacious, no doubt, but far from tactful. I enjoyed Zacks' enthusiasm, but I disliked how every figure appears incompetent to hype up Eaton. Still, it's the seemingly-impossible beginning of U.S. espionage, a strange episode worth knowing about. The march across the desert and the battle in Derne reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia! show less

The only thing you hear in school is how the young United States faced down the Barbary Pirates. That's not what happened! Zacks details the double-dealing, loathesome tactics that passed for high diplomacy surrounding the attempted rescue/ransom of American sailors held as slaves by the Bashaw of Tripoli following the folly of their incompetent captain which caused them to be shipwrecked. Small wonder relationships with that part of the world are still difficult after 200 plus years.