Reading of the Democratic party's enfranchisement of immigrants in our 1996 presidential election, specifically the Mexicans illegally coming across the Rio Grande, parallels the story of the big city political machines doing the same thing around the turn of the 19th century and thereafter. Because of shifts in the composition of the labor market, reflecting the advancing information age, and for other reasons, these Bosses have seen their political power continuously diluted. They have in turn been replaced by race baiting demigogues such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. 20% of the Democratic party base is made up of potential Black voters, and the most effective way of getting them to the polls is to practice the politics of divisiveness by lying to them. What's changed?

The book is a facinating insight into political machines and their place in the political arcana of America. A must for poly-Sci majors.

I know there are newer biographies of Sam Rayburn, who served as Speaker of the House from 1941 till 1947 and from 1949 till 1953 and from 1955 till he died on Nov. 16, 1961, which I have not read. He was an interesting and great man, and this biography tells his life story withunderstanding if not with too much verve. What saves the book is that it is so filled with interesting facts, some of which were new to me. Lyndon Johnson was a big buddy of Rayburn's, as Caro's Master of the Senate makes clear, but the more or less incidental account of Johnson's achievement in getting the 1957 Civil Rights Bill thru the Senate, which is hailed and studied in such detail in Caro's book, is given an entirely different slant in this work, much less flattering to Johnson than is the account in Master of the Senate. This book is adequately footnoted, and the sources are often indicative of the work that the author went to to get the book right, and there is a good bibliography. I had a good feeling when I finished this book that it does Sam Rayburn justice.