Magic in the Air: The Times & Life of Boston's Honey Fitz - Softcover

James Aloisi

9780978825904: Magic in the Air: The Times & Life of Boston's Honey Fitz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 097882590X ISBN 13: 9780978825904

Publisher: Ashburton Hill, 2007

History, in part, is the story of the connections and inter-relationships that create important transitions over time. John Francis Fitzgerald's political career was largely played out during a critical crossroads in Boston politics. He was a political leader who became the bridge between the era of the urban ward boss and the era of powerful mayors. He was among the first Boston Irish politicians to break away from the assimilationists of the nineteenth century to establish a new paradigm of power in the city. And through his eldest daughter Rose, he left a familial legacy that would become central to the history of the nation in the fifty years following his death. Magic in the Air is fundamentally a Boston story, but it is also an instructive tale about the immigrant's drive to succeed and achieve power in America. In that sense, it is a story that resonates well beyond the borders of the historical capital city of Massachusetts.

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About the Author:

James Aloisi, an attorney with the Boston law firm Goulston & Storrs, has served as assistant attorney general of Massachusetts and assistant secretary of transportation under Governor Michael Dukakis. He is the author of The Big Dig and lives in Boston.

Review:

His parents fled starvation in Ireland, his grandson sent Americans into outer space. John Fitzgerald, best known as the grandfather of President John F. Kennedy, deserves to be known as a pivotal figure in Boston's turbulent history. James Aloisi in this well-researched and thoroughly engaging book brings to life Fitzgerald and his tumultuous era. Fitzgerald led Boston's transformation from a cloistered enclave of Cabots and Lowells, to a welcoming home to sons and daughters from around the world. --Robert J. Allison, author of A Short History of Boston and The Crescent Observed: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815.

Would that politics, in its best meaning, would regain the full life that this book so perfectly describes. Characters abound. But so does character. --William M. Bulger, former Senate President, Massachusetts General Court, and former President, University of Massachusetts.

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