December 2, 1997
One of the most notorious and powerful political bosses of the interwar period, Tom Pendergast ran the politics of Kansas City, Missouri, and oversaw a considerable empire of organized vice and crime. His political machine was sometimes able even to influence state politics and started Harry Truman on his rise to the presidency. Larsen (history, Univ. of Missouri, Kansas City) and Hulston (director of archives, Univ. of Kansas Medical Ctr.) have written a solid and interesting biography that also doubles as a study of Kansas City's squalid side during the Pendergast years. Pendergast was, even in full power, a target of reform efforts orchestrated by shifting coalitions of Republicans, disaffected fellow Democrats, the Kansas City Star, and federal officials, leading finally to his conviction on tax charges in 1939. This book will be of most interest regionally, but all academic collections should consider it as well.--Fritz Buckallew, Univ. of Central Oklahoma Lib., Edmond
December 1, 1997
Between early boomers' nostalgia for the era when they (we!) landed on earth and recent Truman print (David McCullough's 1992 "Truman") and video (PBS and A & E) biographies, there should be a wider-than-regional market for this first full-scale biography of Thomas J. ("Boss") Pendergast, the Kansas City political mastermind whose machine put Truman on the long and winding road to the White House. Larsen, a history professor at the University of Missouri^-Kansas City, and Hulston, head of the University of Kansas Medical Center Archives, had access to previously unavailable family and prison records as well as more traditional primary and secondary sources; they use this material effectively in documenting the rise and fall of an urban political boss who may have been more powerful and ruthless than any other in U.S. history. Their book is especially strong on Pendergast's power in the national Democratic Party and on the chain of events that sent him to Leavenworth Prison for tax evasion in 1939. ((Reviewed December 1, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)