A slightly plodding account of the New York heatwave of 1896, and the impact that it had on the careers of two American politicians - Teddy Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan. Bryan is the more interesting, though the least successful - a failed almost-populist, almost-radical who's career came off the rails at a mass rally in Madison Square Gardens, during the heatwave. The book doesn't say this, but some people
think that Bryan was the model for the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz.
Despite this not being a brilliant book there's lots to think about - how our cities are going to cope with climate change, for one thing. And also about how the United States has always been separate economies forced into a single sovereign state, and the Populist moment was about the way that the agricultural west didn't really belong in the same monetary system as the industrial North East.
No comments:
Post a Comment