Bread and Circus

The rise and fall of William Marcy ("Boss") Tweed, one of the most clever, charismatic, and notoriously corrupt politicians of all time

This fictionalized biography chronicles the rise and fall of William Marcy ("Boss") Tweed, one of the most clever, charismatic, and notoriously corrupt politicians of all time. Despite the presumably factual chronology and the vivid depiction of violence and wretched poverty in mid-19th-century New York, the entire tone of the book is wrong. Tweed's final moments with his dying father and his long-standing affair with cold but lusty Augusta Courtlandt are sensitively handled, but the lofty narrative is generally inappropriate to its earthy subject. The dialogue is equally distorted. Tweed, the son of a chairmaker, spouts lyrical phrases while Commodore Vanderbilt of old New York monied society is presented as a crude, illiterate curmudgeon. There may be a story to tell, but Renek hasn't told it. Even Boss Tweed deserves better. Ronald L. Coombs, SUNY Downstate Medical Ctr. Lib., Brooklyn, N.Y.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.