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The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
Maybe someday
42
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
22/100Critics
61/100Scholars
Author:
Michael Wolraich
Publisher:
Union Square & Co.
Date:
February 6, 2024
The story of how the murder of femme fatale Vivian Gordon in 1931 brought about the downfall of the mayor of New York City and led to the end of Tammany Hallâs dominance.
What The Reviewers Say
Wolraich’s account of the murder and the ensuing investigations, helmed by the former judge Samuel Seabury...is brick-dense yet propulsive. Unlike the sensationalist reporters of the era, Wolraich manages to handle even the seediest of underworlds with reportorial spareness and elegance, treating his material more as a nonfiction political thriller than a true-crime whodunit.
Even though she's dead before Bishop begins, Gordon emerges fully formed in Wolraich's account.
Michael Wolraich tells the story in vivid detail.
It was an unlikely David-and-Goliath battle, one which historian and journalist Wolraich presents in a massively researched chronicle of fraud and vice that is as relevant today as it was a century ago..
