Born to Irish immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Al Smith was the earliest champion of immigrant Americans. In 1928, Smith became the first Catholic to run for the presidency but his candidacy was fiercely opposed by the KKK, and his campaign was wiped out by a tidal wave of anti-Catholic hatred. After years of hardship, Smith reconciled his soured relationships with political bigwigs and once again became a generous, heroic figure. Photos.

The Revolution of ’28 explores the career of New York governor and 1928 Democratic presidential nominee Alfred E. Smith. Robert Chiles peers into Smith’s work and uncovers a distinctive strain of American progressivism that resonated among urban, ethnic, working-class Americans in the early twentieth century. The book charts the rise of that idiomatic progressivism during Smith’s early years as a state legislator through his time as governor of the Empire State in the 1920s, before proceeding to a revisionist narrative of the 1928 presidential campaign, exploring the ways in which Smith’s gubernatorial progressivism was presented to a national audience. As Chiles points out, new-stock voters responded enthusiastically to Smith's candidacy on both economic and cultural levels. Chiles offers a historical argument that describes the impact of this coalition on the new liberal formation that was to come with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, demonstrating the broad practical consequences of Smith’s political career. In particular, Chiles notes how Smith’s progressive agenda became Democratic partisan dogma and a rallying point for policy formation and electoral success at the state and national levels. Chiles sets the record straight in The Revolution of ’28 by paying close attention to how Smith identified and activated his emergent coalition and put it to use in his campaign of 1928, before quickly losing control over it after his failed presidential bid.

When it first opened on October 27, 1904, the New York City subway ran twenty-two miles from City Hall to 145th Street and Lenox Avenue—the longest stretch ever built at one time. From that initial route through the completion of the IND or Independent Subway line in the 1940s, the subway grew to cover 722 miles—long enough to reach from New York to Chicago. In this definitive history, Clifton Hood traces the complex and fascinating story of the New York City subway system, one of the urban engineering marvels of the twentieth century. For the subway's centennial the author supplies a new foreward explaining that now, after a century, "we can see more clearly than ever that this rapid transit system is among the twentieth century's greatest urban achievements."

The meteoric rise and dramatic fall of Alfred E. Smith, the brash, Catholic anti-Prohibitionist from New York's Lower East Side, are well known. His job at the Fulton Fish Market through his years in the state legislature and as four-time governor of New York to his crushing defeat in 1928 and his final, puzzling defection from the Democratic party in 1936 are the stuff of legend. Christopher M. Finan provides a full, nuanced study, written with verve and zeal, of this intriguing--and misunderstood--politician. The meteoric rise and dramatic fall of Alfred E. Smith, the brash, Catholic anti-Prohibitionist from New York's Lower East Side, are well known. His job at the Fulton Fish Market through his years in the state legislature and as four-time governor of New York to his crushing defeat in 1928 and his final, puzzling defection from the Democratic party in 1936 are the stuff of legend. Christopher M. Finan provides a full, nuanced study, written with verve and zeal, of this intriguing--and misunderstood--politician.