Customer Reviews

Pendergast! (MISSOURI BIOGRAPHY SERIES)

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I graduated from the University of Missouri, Kansas City in May 2001 and Dr. Larsen was my head adviser on my Master's thesis. I chose him for being the most published professor in the Department of History.

Pendergast is a true page turner, while at the same time the book maintains its academic credentials with meticulous footnotes referencing the best primary source material available. Dr. Larsen is no slouch, and this book lives up to his high standards.

Jim and Tom Pendergast were working class, Irish American, "goat" Democrats, who represented the interests of the poor and politically unconnected. Pendergast concrete built downtown KC, and the political machine employed men in a time before unemployment compensation, workers compensation, welfare, Social Security or any of the programs of the New Deal. However, Pendergast thugs ran heroin, prostitution, gambling, illegal hooch and practically every other vice. Kansas City in the 1930s was a hotbed of crime but also of religious and racial tolerance, senseless violence but also cultural mixing, machine gun blasts but also brilliant jazz (Lester Young, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, etc.). The city itself was compared to Calcutta & Shanghai, and Pendergast's KC created a sleazy example to be perfected later by Las Vegas.

Inevitably the forces of progress halted Pendergast. The IRS busted him for tax evasion in 1939. There was no longer room in America for Pendergast in the age of Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal. However, Pendergast's mixed legacy made Kansas City the most swinging and interesting city in America for a time, which the city has never quite seen again, as it fell back into the Protestant, Midwestern fold.

Just read the book. It's outstanding.