Hot Time in the Old Town

One of the worst natural disasters in American history, the 1896 New York City heat wave killed almost 1,500 people in ten oppressively hot days. The heat coincided with a pitched presidential contest between William McKinley and upstart Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who arrived in New York at the height of the catastrophe. Showing how Bryan's hopes for the presidency began to flag just as a bright, young police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt was scrambling to aid the city's poor, Hot Time in the Old Town vividly captures both the birth of the Progressive Era and one of New York's greatest--yet least-remembered--tragedies.

Edward P. Kohn is an Assistant Professor of American History and Chair of the American Culture and Literature Department at Bilkent University. His previous works include This Kindred People. He lives in Ankara, Turkey.