Sublime

Yet writing in the 1963 foreword—before the Immigration Act—Baltzell was already pointing out that “[s]ince [Teddy] Roosevelt’s day, America has become, at all levels of society, the most ethnically and racially heterogeneous nation on earth.”4

During his decades of power, the public works decisions that determined the city’s shape were made on the basis not of democratic but of economic considerations. During most of his reign—the post-La Guardia portion of it—the city’s people had no real voice at all in determining the city’s future.

Courageous

As Burke said in describing his early years in Albany, “Murphy delegates to the point of anarchy.”7