Honest Graft The World of George Washington Plunkitt (Plunkitt of Tammany Hall)

William L. Riordon's compiling and embroidering of Boss Plunkitt's boastful comments on machine politics constitutes a minor classic in American social history in the Gilded Age and beyond. In an introduction to this edition of the political boss's remarks, James S. Olson, chairman of the history department at Sam Houston State University, and James W. Mooney of American University engage in a provocative exchange over how the boss mentality as Plunkitt expressed it is to be judged.

James S. Olson is Distinguished Professor of History at Sam Houston State University. He is the recipient of the university's Excellence in Teaching Award and Excellence in Research Award. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than thirty books, including The Ethnic Dimension in American History, Third Edition (Blackwell, 1999); Catholic Immigrants in America (1993); Winning is the Only Thing: Sports in America Since 1945 (1989); and John Wayne American (1996), which won the Ray and Pat Brown National Book Award from the Popular Culture Association. His book A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory (2001) won the Diolece Parmelee Award from the Texas Historical Foundation. Finally, his most recent book—Bathsheba’s Breast: Women, Cancer, and History (2002)—was nominated by The Johns Hopkins University Press for the Pulitzer Prize in History, won the History of Science Category Award from the Association of American Publishers, and was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as one of the best non-fiction books in America for 2002.