Books in Brief

Al Smith and His America, by Oscar Handlin (Atlantic-Little Brown, $3.50). More sociologist than biographer, Professor Handlin devotes most of this short book to trying to make city-machine politics look like a Boy Scout meeting, with the Tammany bosses—Tim Foley, Big Tim Sullivan and Charles F. Murphy— as Al’s scoutmasters. Smith, of course, was something more than a Tammany warrior. Had he not been, he could hardly have seized the imagination of as large a number of Americans as he did and become the Democratic Presidential standard-bearer in 1928. Professor Handlin quite correctly points out that Smith’s defeat was due in measure to the fact that he was a Catholic. In this much misunderstood election, however, it must be kept in mind that Smith was also an outspoken “Wet,” a city slicker and a machine man; nor should the events of 1929-1932 cause us to forget how great was the personal popularity of Herbert Hoover, and how appealing “Republican prosperity,” in 1928.

J. H. Beck

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Al Smith and His America, by Oscar Handlin (Atlantic-Little Brown, $3.50). More sociologist than biographer, Professor Handlin devotes most of this short book to trying to make city-machine politics look like a Boy Scout meeting, with the Tammany bosses—Tim Foley, Big Tim Sullivan and Charles F. Murphy— as Al’s scoutmasters. Smith, of course, was something more than a Tammany warrior. Had he not been, he could hardly have seized the imagination of as large a number of Americans as he did and become the Democratic Presidential standard-bearer in 1928. Professor Handlin quite correctly points out that Smith’s defeat was due in measure to the fact that he was a Catholic. In this much misunderstood election, however, it must be kept in mind that Smith was also an outspoken “Wet,” a city slicker and a machine man; nor should the events of 1929-1932 cause us to forget how great was the personal popularity of Herbert Hoover, and how appealing “Republican prosperity,” in 1928.

J. H. Beck