Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

Since its publication in 1905,Plunkitt of Tammany Hallhas given generations of students a passport into the world of controversy, conflict, corruption, and color that surrounded urban political machines at their zenith. The full text of William Riordon's book is supported here by nine primary documents that place both the book and its subject into context.

Terrence J. McDonald is professor of history at the University of Michigan. His book, The Parameters of Urban Fiscal Policy: Socioeconomic Change and Political Culture in San Francisco, 1860 to 1906, won the 1987 Allan M. Sharlin Memorial Award of the Social Science History Association and the 1988 J. S. Holliday Award from the California Historical Society. He is a member of the board of editors of the Journal of Urban History and Studies in American Political development, and he has published essays in those journals as well as in Social History, Historical Methods, the History Teacher, and Reviews in American History. His research on George Washington Plunkitt is part of an ongoing project on the image of the urban political machine and American liberalism entitled "Inventing Urban Politics: The City and the State in American Political Development, 1880-1980."