Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave Of 1896 and the Making Of Theodore Roosevelt [Hardcover]

This was an impulse purchase a week or so ago, and I'm VERY glad indeed that I didn't start reading it until the hot weather broke (briefly) in New York this past weekend, as it's the chilling (sorry, bad pun) story of the 1896 New York heatwave that killed thousands, mostly poor working men and infants.

Kohn begins his story of a week in August by describing a horrific death toll of another kind -- the result of a railway crash. To New Yorkers, by the time the 19th century was drawing to a close, it seemed as if natural disasters had been replaced by those associated with man-made phenomena of various kinds -- until the heat wave struck, and they were reminded forcibly that some things, like the weather, can't always be conquered.

But the best thing about this book isn't the chronicle of misery during the heatwave, but the way Kotman weaves that horrifying story of death (including the deaths of horses in the streets, left to rot for days...) into the political climate of the day. At first, I was tempted to ask what the connection was, other than that of timing -- the presidential nominees for the Republican and Democratic parties had recently been selected -- but Kohn quickly makes clear where he's going. He's telling the story of the way in which the heatwave indirectly contributed to the end of the political ambitions of populist demagogue William Jennings Bryan, whose campaign hit the skids in New York on the same day that the heat wave peaked, for reasons that Kotman argues have as much to do with the heatwave as with Bryan's own unwelcome opinions. (There's a lot here about the battle to add silver as a reserve currency, and bimetallism, which is interesting, if you care to forge through it.) But it's also the tale of Theodore Roosevelt's ascendancy to political power, which took on fresh momentum in the wake of the heatwave. To borrow a phrase, it was the tipping point in both their political ambitions.

There's also plenty of fascinating detail about how people in New York's tenements really lived at the time -- despite having visited the Tenement Museum on the lower east side, Kohn's vivid prose brought this to life for me in a way that I hadn't experienced before. These days, people hold parties on their rooftops; in the late 19th century people slept there, despite melting tar and the risk of rolling over the parapet to their deaths, because it was the only way to catch a breath of air that wasn't fetid.

An excellent story, not only fascinating because it deals with the story of how people lived at the time, but because Kohn weaves into it the historical, political and social context. As the world gets hotter and our society even more urbanized than it was in 1896, we take refuge in our "cooling centers" and air-conditioned rooms -- but this book offers a lot of food for thought. I expect every time the thermometer jumps above 90 Fahrenheit, I'll be thinking about this...

4.5 stars, rounded up. Just don't read it in a heatwave.

The title indicates that the book will show how the New York heat wave of August 1896 influenced the political career of Theodore Roosevelt. If that really is the author's intent, then the book is a frustrating failure. TR is a tangential figure in the narrative, no matter how many anecdotes the author tells about Roosevelt's tenure as president of the police commission. In fact, the book only shows one effect of the heat wave: that people suffered, including those who attended William Jennings Bryan's speech at Madison Square Garden, and Bryan himself. The author suggests that the poor speech derailed Bryan's chances of winning the election, but there is no evidence for that assertion.

On the other hand, perhaps the title was some sort of editorial compromise, because the majority of the text covers a slice of 1896 presidential campaign politics. The heat wave figures in to the campaign, we are told, because of its effect on Bryan and those around him, but the political effects of the heat are not as prominent in the book as the personal tragedies of random New Yorkers that get tossed into the book every few pages or so. The repetition is numbing and boring, but it is the sense of padding that really distracts the reader. The book seems little more than story after story about the campaign, punctuated with tales of heat wave victims, none of it tied into a cohesive whole. Even at the end, the author makes assertions about TR and Bryan that are unsupported by the text.

In fact, nothing is supported in the text. There is a bibliography, but it is more like a list of suggested works for further reading. The book has no footnotes, and there is no way to verify the author's work. He doesn't say where he got this or that fact, or why he comes to the various conclusions he does throughout the book. We can take him at his word that he reviewed the dozens of death certificates that he says he did, but we shouldn't have to trust him for his political observations unless we know exactly what their bases are.

The book is superficial and repetitive, and it jumps here and there among several topics that the author fails to unite coherently. I recommend this book for people who don't read a lot, and therefore will not be put off by the simplistic writing; for readers who get bored easily, and want a narrative that jumps among its disparate topics without threading them together; and for the easily distracted, who need to have the same point repeated ad nauseam.

Author Edward Kohn has written two books, in a sense, with his new offering, "Hot Time in the Old Town". Each has its merit....one regarding the New York heat wave of August, 1896...the other, the rise and fall of the political lives of Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan. As separate entities, they merit a read, but together, the book doesn't work.

Kohn is at his best when describing the prolonged, public suffering of those who lived and died during the heat wave. Individuals perished after falling off rooftops, collapsing at work and being suffocated in their own tenement apartments. Horses died more quickly than the health department could remove them and the stench that filled the air was palpable. The city government did virtually nothing, forbidding its citizens even to sleep in public parks. The relief from ice distribution was slow to begin and uneven in its delivery.

The connection to all of this with Roosevelt and Bryan is, to put it mildly, a stretch. Bryan's fate was sealed with his nomination and Roosevelt's fame would come after the Spanish-American War, so incorporating them doesn't serve history accurately. It's a nice try, but the heat wave story is the far better one to be told.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 17 reviews  3.5 out of 5 stars