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Title: The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism by James McGrath Morris ISBN: 0-8232-2267-5 Publisher: Fordham University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Brings an Era to Life
Comment: For those who loved the novel Ragtime or Caleb Carr's potraits of New York at the turn of the 19th century, The Rose Man of Sing Sing is a real treat: a behind-the-scenes peek at murder and mayhem in the Gilded Age. The detail is extraordinary, the writing fluid and engaging, and the psychological portrait of Charles Chapin acute. A book that is very hard to put down.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Newspaper Legend's Crime and Redemption
Comment: If you looked at the January 1925 issue of that arbiter of domestic taste, _House and Garden_, you would have seen a photo layout of a rose garden that would have been the envy of any socialite or country club. The garden was tasteful, with fountains, a pool of water lilies, and blue spruce trees in addition to thousands of roses. Besides the obvious beauty of the garden, there was one other thing that made it unique. At one end of the garden was an old execution chamber. The garden was in the middle of the infamous prison, Sing Sing, in New York. It was the creation of a prisoner who, before he murdered his wife, was a legendary newsman who worked directly for Joseph Pulitzer, and often himself handled coverage of society murders. The term of Charles Chapin as city editor of the _New York Evening World_ was full of spectacular tabloid stories, and James McGrath Morris, himself a former journalist, has brought back Chapin's forgotten story and explained how the press worked in the early parts of the twentieth century in the astonishing book, _The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism_ (Fordham University Press). It is a story at times as lurid, melodramatic, and spectacular as any of the stories Chapin himself published.
Chapin started delivering the local paper at age fourteen. He was determined to get himself an education, and although he could not attend school, he read ravenously and well. A kindly editor selected books for the boy, classics that Chapin drew upon all his life. He was thrilled to become a reporter in Chicago, but eventually made his lasting mark in New York, where at the _Evening World_, he presided over a technological revolution. The new telephone allowed Chapin to give orders to reporters in the field, and to shape the stories. Field reporters would call in the details of a story, and the new "rewrite reporters" would write it up for the paper. As a result, Chapin gave the _World_ unrivaled immediacy in reporting New York's news. Especially fascinating is the story of how Chapin got the news about the sinking of the _Titanic_. Chapin was recognized as the best of city editors, but he was not easy to work for. He was merciless on himself, and extended this treatment to his reporters. His abilities made them tolerate working for him. He was devoted to his wife, and seems sincerely to have wanted to put her out of prospective misery when his investments failed; he had planned a murder suicide, but only killed her, and turned himself in. He was convicted of murder in 1919 and given twenty years to life. In Sing Sing, the warden took particular interest in him, which is not surprising given how different Chapin must have been from the usual criminals there. Chapin had never been a gardener, but began to cultivate a small plot; he became obsessed with his plants, solicited donations from those he knew in the business world, and commanded inmate assistants with the same fervor he had used on reporters. Ladies clubs came to take the tour of the grounds, as did celebrities like Booth Tarkington and Houdini.
Chapin thus proved to be a model prisoner, and applied for pardon, but no pardon ever came. He was involved in two mostly postal romances with women on the outside, neither of which ended well, mostly because of his lifelong inability to see or accept ambiguity; it was as if he expected a well-chosen headline to cover all the underlying details. He died a convict in 1930, and was buried, according to his wishes, with the wife he had murdered twelve years before. This story, never told before in full, is full of engrossing detail about the competitive working press of the time. Chapin's life, that of a brilliant and limited man who eventually found horticultural redemption, is almost operatic in its sweep, and makes an unforgettable story.
Rating: 5
Summary: WASHINGTON POST SAYS:
Comment: "Morris, a former journalist, a historian and teacher, has done fine work recovering the melodramatic story from a variety of contemporary sources. . . Morris foreshadows Chapin's tragedy skillfully in the first chapter, then drops back and sticks to chronology. He keeps the narrative crisp with telling bits from the journals of the day and Chapin's own writing. . .
James McGrath Morris has done journalism -- and armchair psychiatry -- a fine service by rescuing this melodramatic tale."
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Title: Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America by Eric Rauchway ISBN: 0809071703 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: After the Ball: Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals, and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905 by Patricia Beard ISBN: 0060199393 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Pub. Date: 29 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle ISBN: 0871138743 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank by Steve Oney ISBN: 0679421475 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie ISBN: 0679456716 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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