Howard Zinn establishes LaGuardia's tenure in Congress as a vital link between the Progressive and New Deal eras, offering a lively and informative account of his many formative legislative battles and his political philosophy.

“Fascinating. . . . Williams tells the story of La Guardia and Roosevelt with insight and elegance.”—Edward Glaeser, New York Times Book Review

Fiorello LaGuardia is known best as the tempestuous mayor of New York City in the days when Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat in the White House. There had been, however, an earlier time, which matched his mayoralty years in sheer drama and perhaps surpassed them in lasting achievement—LaGuardia's years in Congress.He served in the House of Representative almost continuously from 1917 to 1933, representing two ethnically diverse congressional districts: the Fourteenth (Greenwich Village), from 1917 to 1919, and the Twentieth (East Harlem), from 1923 to 1933. Although barred from important committee posts because of his political independence and thus denied from playing a direct role in lawmaking, he was a tireless and vocal champion of Progressive causes, from allowing more immigration and removing U.S. troops from Nicaragua to speaking up for the rights and livelihoods of striking miners, impoverished farmers, oppressed minorities, and struggling families. A goad to the era's plutocrats and their enablers in government, LaGuardia fought for progressive income taxes, greater government oversight of Wall Street, and national employment insurance for workers idled by the Great Depression.In this book, first published by Cornell University Press in 1959, Howard Zinn establishes LaGuardia's tenure in Congress as a vital link between the Progressive and New Deal eras, offering a lively and informative account of his many legislative battles, his political philosophy, and the distinctly urban (specifically, New York City) sensibilities he brought to the Progressive movement.

Soon after his inauguration in 1934, New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia began appointing women into his administration. By the end of his three terms in office, he had installed almost a hundred as lawyers in his legal department, but also as board and commission members and as secretaries, deputy commissioners, and judges. No previous mayor had done anything comparable. Aware they were breaking new ground for women in American politics, the "Women of the La Guardia Administration," as they called themselves, met frequently for mutual support and political strategizing. This is the first book to tell their stories. Author Elisabeth Israels Perry begins with the city's suffrage movement, which prepared these women for political action as enfranchised citizens. After they won the vote in 1917, suffragists joined political party clubs and began to run for office, many of them hoping to use political platforms to enact feminist and progressive public policies. Circumstances unique to mid-twentieth century New York City advanced their progress. In 1930, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized an inquiry into alleged corruption in the city's government, long dominated by the Tammany Hall political machine. The inquiry turned first to the Vice Squad's entrapment of women for sex crimes and the reported misconduct of the Women's Court. Outraged by the inquiry's disclosures and impressed by La Guardia's pledge to end Tammany's grip on city offices, many New York City women activists supported him for mayor. It was in partial recognition of this support that he went on to appoint an unprecedented number of them into official positions, furthering his plans for a modernized city government. In these new roles, La Guardia's women appointees not only contributed to the success of his administration but left a rich legacy of experience and political wisdom to oncoming generations of women in American politics.

Includes congressional correspondence (1919-1933), mayoralty correspondence (1933-1945), press releases, speeches, writings, printed material, and scrapbooks.

Born in 1881 in New York City, Gemma La Guardia Gluck was the daughter of Italian immigrants, a mother of prestigious Italian Jewish lineage and a father who became a U.S. army bandleader. She was the sister of beloved New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Gemma and her Hungarian Jewish husband were living in Budapest in 1944 when Nazi troops stormed the city. Eichmann and Himmler ordered her arrest as a political hostage because she was La Guardia's sister. Gluck recounts the plight of Budapest's Jews, deportation to Mauthausen with her husband, imprisonment at the notorious Ravensbriick women's concentration camp, and difficulties as a displaced person in postwar Berlin. With compassion and sensitivity she chronicles unspeakable evil, kindness at great risk, and courage among women in a prefeminist world. She also recalls her girlhood years spent in the Old West, native Americans befriended by her mother, her family's return to Europe, and her brother's ambitions and rise to success. Gemma's memoir is a story of a wise and strong woman who remained optimistic and resourceful, even when life was much less than fair. Her story, first published in 1961, has been out of print for decades. This revised edition contains a new prologue, epilogue, photos, annotated material, and recently discovered letters between Gemma and Fiorello.

This book presents a series of case studies and thought-provoking essays arguing for a radical approach to history and providing a revisionist interpretation of the historian's role. In a new introduction, the author responds to critics of his original work and comments further on the radicalization of history.