The Rascal King
The Life and Times of James Michael Curley (1874-1958)
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Narrated by:
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Chris Andrew Ciulla
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By:
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Jack Beatty
About this listen
"A truly brilliant biography." (John Kenneth Galbraith, Chicago Tribune)
James Michael Curley was the stuff of legend. Twice jailed while serving in office, yet a champion of the people; builder of schools, yet a shameless grafter; born in the slums of South Boston, yet rising to become one of the most wealthy, powerful politicians of his day. In a remarkable career extending from the Progressive Era of Teddy Roosevelt to the ascendancy of the Kennedy sons, Curley represented both the triumph of Irish Americans and the birth of divisive politics of ethnic and racial polarization. When he died in 1958, more than one million mourners turned out to pay their respects in the largest wake Boston had ever seen. He truly was a man like no other.
This riveting biography, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, is National Book Award-winning author Jack Beatty at his very best. A spellbinding story of "the Kingfish of Massachusetts", this remarkable work is also an epic of his city, its immigrant people, and its turbulent times. It is a biography that will keep you enthralled from page one.
"Beatty's book is a delight—rich, witty, flowing, and full of insight about the nature of political corruption." (Constance Casey, Los Angeles Times)
"A panoramic, exquisitely incisive biography that illuminates the triumphs, debacles, and personal sorrows of the irrepressible man known as Boston's 'Mayor of the Poor.'" (Robert Wilson, USA Today)
Performed by award-winning narrator, Boston College graduate and Boston-area native Chris Andrew Ciulla.
Proudly brought to you by Leonardo Audio, a New England-based imprint.
©2000, 2023 Da Capo Press (Paperback, Hardcopy), Leonardo Audio (e-pub) (P)2023 Leonardo AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
It was the election that would ultimately give America "Camelot" and its tragic aftermath. 1960 is a stunning recreation of the bare-knuckle politics of the primaries, the party conventions' backroom dealings, the unprecedented television debates, along with hot-button issues of race, religion, and foreign policy. And, at the center of it all, three future presidents - Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon. In this essential work of history, David Pietrusza chronicles 1960's struggle for power by bringing to life its towering events and personalities, unlocking its secrets, and turning expert scholarship into rich, human storytelling.
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No F words, but the N-word is allowed
- By Porter on 12-04-18
By: David Pietrusza
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Frank and Al
- FDR, Al Smith, and the Unlikely Alliance That Created the Modern Democratic Party
- By: Terry Golway
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Just before the Roaring Twenties, Al Smith, a proud son of the Tammany Hall political machine, and Franklin Roosevelt, a country squire, formed an unlikely alliance that transformed the Democratic Party. Smith and FDR dominated politics in the most-powerful state in the union for a quarter-century, and in 1932, they ran against each other for the Democratic presidential nomination, setting off one of the great feuds in American history. The relationship between Smith and Roosevelt, portrayed here, is one of the most dramatic untold stories of early 20th-century American politics.
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Solid and important history
- By J&L Hely on 08-27-23
By: Terry Golway
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The Making of the President 1960
- By: Theodore H. White
- Narrated by: Wayne Mitchell
- Length: 19 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Making of the President: 1960 revolutionized the way modern presidential campaigns are reported. Reporting from within the campaign for the first time on record, White’s extensive research and access to all parties involved set the bar for campaign coverage and remains unparalleled. White conveyed, in magnificent detail and with exquisite pacing, the high-stakes drama; he painted the unforgettable, even mythic story of JFK versus Nixon; and, most of all, he imbued the nation’s presidential election process with grandeur.
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A Timely Book
- By Stephen on 07-28-20
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Lyndon
- An Oral Biography
- By: Merle Miller
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 32 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling presidential biographer Merle Miller has crafted a candid portrait of one of the most complex, fascinating, difficult, and colorful figures in American history. From his birth in 1908 to his death in 1973, the story of Lyndon B. Johnson is told with no sparing his personal excesses and contentious public image - while also highlighting the strength of his greatest accomplishments in Washington.
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Flawless
- By Jeffrey on 01-04-21
By: Merle Miller
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Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents
- What Your Teachers Never Told you About the Men of The White House
- By: Cormac O'Brien
- Narrated by: Robin Bloodworth
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents features outrageous and uncensored profiles of the men in the White House - complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts.
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Sloppy, dull, partisan
- By Scott D. Gray on 06-25-15
By: Cormac O'Brien
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Great Society
- A New History
- By: Amity Shlaes
- Narrated by: Terence Aselford
- Length: 17 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In Great Society, Shlaes offers a powerful companion to her legendary history of the 1930s, The Forgotten Man, and shows that in fact there was scant difference between two presidents we consider opposites: Johnson and Nixon. Just as technocratic military planning by "the Best and the Brightest" made failure in Vietnam inevitable, so planning by a team of the domestic best and brightest guaranteed fiasco at home. At once history and biography, Great Society sketches moving portraits of the characters in this transformative period.
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How have we forgotten how bad these ideas were?
- By Robert S. Allen on 02-09-20
By: Amity Shlaes
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Machine Made
- Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics
- By: Terry Golway
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes.
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A missed opportunity
- By Kathy on 05-27-15
By: Terry Golway
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Star-Spangled Men
- America's Ten Worst Presidents
- By: Nathan Miller
- Narrated by: Andy Caploe
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Picking America's best presidents is easy. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt usually lead the list. But choosing the nation's worst presidents requires more thought. In Star-Spangled Men, respected presidential biographer Nathan Miller puts on display those leaders who were abject failures as chief executive. With pointed humor and a deft hand, he presents a rogues' gallery of the men who dropped the presidential ball, and sometimes their pants as well.
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Entertaining and factual
- By Sean on 10-25-14
By: Nathan Miller
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Nine Days
- The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life and Win the 1960 Election
- By: Paul Kendrick, Stephen Kendrick
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Less than three weeks before the 1960 presidential election, 31-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested at a sit-in at Rich's Department Store in Atlanta. That day would lead to the first night King had ever spent in jail - and the time that King's family most feared for his life. Based on fresh interviews, newspaper accounts, and extensive archival research, Nine Days is the first full recounting of an event that changed the course of one of the closest elections in American history.
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a fascinating, detailed, blow-by-blow approach
- By D. Littman on 01-29-21
By: Paul Kendrick, and others
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The Defining Moment
- FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope
- By: Jonathan Alter
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In this dramatic and fascinating account, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter shows how Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his first 100 days in office to lift the country from the despair and paralysis of the Great Depression and transform the American presidency.
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Very infomative, and also refreshingly honest
- By Andy on 02-19-09
By: Jonathan Alter
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The Chief
- The Life of William Randolph Hearst
- By: David Nasaw
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 30 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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William Randolph Hearst, known to his staff as the "Chief", was a brilliant business strategist and a man of prodigious appetites. By the 1930s, he controlled the largest publishing empire in the United States, including 28 newspapers, the Cosmopolitan Picture Studio, radio stations, and 13 magazines. He quickly learned how to use this media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power. In The Chief, David Nasaw presents an intimate portrait of the man famously characterized in the classic film Citizen Kane.
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Fascinating but
- By Michael on 02-17-22
By: David Nasaw
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JFK
- Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
- By: Fredrik Logevall
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 29 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history.
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Excellent Portrait of JFK & His Times
- By John David on 12-14-20
By: Fredrik Logevall
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Master of the Senate
- The Years of Lyndon Johnson III
- By: Robert A. Caro
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Abridged
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Master of the Senate carries Lyndon Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his 12 years in the U.S. Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done. "There is something uniquely mesmerizing about the wily, combative Lyndon Johnson as portrayed by Caro," says Publishers Weekly.
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Abridgement bad
- By Shelly Brisbin on 09-05-04
By: Robert A. Caro
What listeners say about The Rascal King
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Nancy M. Davis
- 10-29-23
Listen to this book! It will change your perspective on Boston and U.S. politics!
Growing up in the greater Boston area, I had heard vague stories about Curley, but had no idea about the depths to which his corruption ran, through the very many political offices he held, of which I was also unaware. I had only heard of “Mayor Curley”. As Curley doles out favors to his poor and underprivileged followers, (in exchange for votes of course), I was often reminded of the Godfather - when people have no power who will they turn to? Someone exactly like Curley. It’s happened over and over again, in every political sphere, and in every country in the world. Just as the quote re Perron states, “before I was a poor and a nobody, now I am only poor.” I have often pondered over the prevalence of Irish people in the public sector in Boston, and now I know the history behind it. The breadth of Curley’s power is nearly unfathomable - the number of years he was able to balance political graft with massive popularity, his narcissistic ability to see himself as having the right to do what he did - to listen to all of it laid out so precisely and with such historical background was eye-opening. All of the names I see every day in buildings and bridges, Saltonstall, Hynes, Tobin, O’Neill, etc came to life in this book.
I was excited to see an Audible version of this book, as I most likely would not have read it otherwise. The narrator is impeccable in his delineation of the Boston accents, of which there are many, (no, Hollywood, we don’t all speak with the same accent in Boston). The narrator’s capture of and consistency with all of the accents, - and particularly Curley’s accent, more Boston Brahmin than Roxbury Irish, - throughout this long and intricate book is amazing and extremely entertaining. I felt that I was listening to Curley speak. The pace of the reading is perfect, and the narrator’s voice easy to listen to.
My only caveat in praise of the audio version is that you should have a timeline from google on the ready while reading. The book does jump around in time quite a bit, and it’s not as easy to backtrack in an audio version as it is with a hard copy. I will be watching The Last Hurrah, and researching “the Governor”, and am thankful to the audiobook for inciting my interest in the topic.
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