Doomed by Cartoon: How Cartoonist Thomas Nast and the New York Times Brought Down Boss Tweed and His Ring of Thieves

The legendary Boss Tweed effectively controlled New York City from after the Civil War until his downfall in November 1871. A huge man, he and his Ring of Thieves appeared to be invincible as they stole an estimated $2 billion in today's dollars. In addition to the New York city and state governments, the Tweed Ring controlled the press except for Harper's Weekly. Short and slight Thomas Nast was the most dominant American political cartoonist of all time; using his pen as his sling in Harper's Weekly, he attacked Tweed almost single-handily before The New-York Times joined the battle in 1870. Where Doomed by Cartoon differs from previous books about Boss Tweed is its focus on looking at circumstances and events as Thomas Nast visualized them in his 160-plus cartoons, almost like a serialized but intermittent comic book covering 1866 through 1978. It has been organized to tell the Nast vs. Tweed story so that readers with an interest in politics history and/or cartoons will enjoy.

Author: John Adler, Draper Hill
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Published: 08/01/2008
Pages: 310
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.64lbs
Size: 11.00h x 8.26w x 0.81d
ISBN: 9781600374432

About the Author
Adler, John: - "John Adler is a retired management consultant and entrepreneur, who has spent 12 years studying the 2,200-plus cartoons that Thomas Nast drew over 25 years (1862-1886) for Harper's Weekly, America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper. This book, his first, contains more than 160 of them. Mr. Adler is the publisher of two digital databases - Harper's Weekly: 1857-1912 and Lincoln and the Civil War.com - for which he was awarded the 2003 E-Lincoln Prize for History. As a public service, he also initiated and edited 30 historical and literary websites currently available at HarpWeek.com. Several of them feature Nast, including Cartoonist Thomas Nast vs. Candidate Horace Greeley: The Election of 1872; Nast on Broadway: The Grand Caricaturama of 1867-1868; Nast and Shakespeare; and Nast and Literature."Hill, Draper: - Draper Hill, a political cartoonist by profession and a political cartoon historian by avocation, has been engrossed for 50 years by the artistry and imagination of Thomas Nast. John Adler tapped Mr. Hill's vast store of knowledge by commissioning him to prepare three Nast-oriented projects, providing about 60% of the narrative and interpretative content included in this book.