"Before There Was Rudy Giuliani, There Was Teddy Roosevelt"

"The reason Roosevelt’s quest was doomed, this account makes clear, is that New Yorkers—then and now—like their vices neat. Sure, they did not favor police and political corruption, but they would not stand for the abridgment of their pleasures, even if the consequence was police and Tammany Hall graft.

"Into that impossible contradiction barged Roosevelt, possessed of enormous intellect, physical courage and vaulting confidence, but also cursed with the relentlessness of a true believer and a thick streak of prudishness."

In The New York Times, Joseph Berger reviews Richard Zacks's Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York.