The American politician James Michael Curley (1874-1958) was a magnetic political figure, particularly as mayor of Boston.

James Curley was born on Nov. 20, 1874, in Boston, a city whose upper-class Yankee Protestant families despised Irish Catholics socially and discriminated against them politically. He became a symbol of the emergence of the Irish from their proletarian status to political dominance. Reared in politics, alienated from any sense of community, Curley formed a hard, unwavering, egocentric determination to succeed.

Curley overcame handicaps of birth and poor education, and his political ascendancy was meteoric. Elected to the Common Council in 1900, he then progressed to the Board of Aldermen and the Massachusetts Legislature. His Irish slum constituency elected him in 1911 to the first of four undistinguished terms in Congress. In 1928 he was a firm supporter of Governor Alfred E. Smith for president. Denied a place in the Massachusetts delegation to the 1932 Democratic convention...