King of the Bowery is the first full-length biography of Timothy D. Big Tim Sullivan, the archetypal Tammany Hall leader who dominated New York City politicsand much of its social lifefrom 1890 to 1913. A poor Irish kid from the Five Points who rose through ambition, shrewdness, and charisma to become the most powerful single politician in New York, Sullivan was quick to perceive and embrace the shifting demographics of downtown New York, recruiting Jewish and Italian newcomers to his largely Irish machine to create one of the nations first multiethnic political organizations. Though a master of the personal, paternalistic, and corrupt politics of the late nineteenth century, Sullivan paradoxically embraced a variety of progressive causes, especially labor and womens rights, anticipating many of the policies later pursued by his early acquaintances and sometimes antagonists Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Drawing extensively on contemporary sources, King of the Bowery offers a rich, readable, and authoritative portrayal of Gotham on the cusp of the modern age, as refracted through the life of a man who exemplified much of it.