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NONFICTION - March 24, 1991

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FROM THE WARD TO THE WHITE HOUSE: The Irish in American Politics by George E. Reedy (Charles Scribner’s Sons: $22.50; 188 pp.). George Reedy, press secretary to Lyndon Johnson and now a professor of journalism at Marquette, disclaims any academic pretensions for this book, and it’s a good thing; he makes all kinds of unsubstantiated generalizations about the rise and gradual decline of the Irish in U.S. politics. Strangely, though, that’s a strength in “From the Ward to the White House,” for Reedy’s conclusions seem right on the mark--that the Irish, who emigrated to the United States in the millions beginning with the Great Potato Famine of the late 1840s, had grown so accustomed (through centuries of English rule) to regard politics as nothing more than the art of the deal that in America they both gravitated to, and excelled at, urban government. For the Irish, Reedy argues in this lively, often amusing book, all politics is local, and the political machines in New York, Boston, Chicago and elsewhere existed not to further an ideology but to provide jobs. “Boodlery,” he writes, “was the Irish formula for redistribution of the wealth.” This is a lively, often amusing book and confirms that a well-told story is more persuasive than a dispassionate marshaling of facts.

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