James Michael Curley - 9781933212975

William M. Bulger takes delight in a letter from one angry critic who wrote, "You are a disgrace. It is not at all clear to me that we are going to survive as a civilization if we do not, people like you will shoulder a substantial part of the blame."Bulger adds that he finds this reassuring: "Considering the source, it means i was doing my job!"

James Michael Curley would have agreed. In a political career spanning the first half of the twentieth century, Curley must have received many letters like that- and he was twice convicted and sentenced to jail, on charges of fraud in 1903 and mail fraud in 1946. Yet he remained a Boston favorite and remains a Boston myth, long after his career as Boston councilor, alderman, and mayor, and Massachusetts governor and Congressman ended.

Bulger was elected in his first bid for public office in 1960, two years after Curley's death, and he won every election until he left office in 1996 to become President of the University of Massachusetts. He served with distinction in public life for nearly forty-five years. In this short biography, William Bulger combines his personal reminiscences with the life of James Michael Curley to represent nearly one hundred years of Boston political life.

What was it about james Michael Curley that made him the most compelling politician in Boston history, at least until the arrival of John F. Kennedy? Eloquent, passionate, loyal to a fault, Curley was twice herded off to jail. Controversy followed him throughout a political career extending from his first run for office in 1897 to his last in 1955. How did he keep such a grip on the public imagination?

Who better to ask than William Bulger, an eloquent, passionate, loyal, and controversial Boston politician of his own day? With nearly forty-five years in public life, beginning with his first successful political campaign two years after Curley's death, Bulger proudly takes on the myth and the man, explaining just why the "rascal" Curley was such an inspiration to the generation who followed him on the hustings.

"We do not look as favorably on politicians of our own day as on those who have braved the political tumult of their own day," writes Bulger. "And none did so more boldly, daringly, and colorfully than James Michael Curley. His life affirms the idea that the political struggle is a worthy undertaking."