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Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt
One of the worst natural disasters in American history, the 1896 New York heat wave killed almost 1,500 people in ten oppressively hot days. The heat coincided with a pitched presidential contest between William McKinley and the upstart Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who arrived in New York City at the height of the catastrophe. As historian Edward P. Kohn shows, Bryan's hopes for the presidency began to flag amidst the abhorrent heat just as a bright young police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt was scrambling to mitigate the dangerously high temperatures by hosing down streets and handing out ice to the poor. A vivid narrative that captures the birth of the progressive era, Hot Time in the Old Town revives the forgotten disaster that almost destroyed a great American city.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published July 16, 2010
18 people are currently reading
530 people want to read
About the author
Edward P. Kohn
5 books2 followersA political and diplomatic historian.
Assistant professor of American history and chair of the American Culture and Literature Department at Bilkent University in Turkey. He earned his PhD from McGill University.
Assistant professor of American history and chair of the American Culture and Literature Department at Bilkent University in Turkey. He earned his PhD from McGill University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
September 13, 2010
Unlike the book "Devil in the White City", This book really talked about what the title states. For a while I was getting annoyed because there was lots of talk of this "Bryan" guy, but it ended up being relevant and very interesting.
In 1896 there was about 10 days in NYC when the temperatures didn't come down out of the high 80's. In the middle of the day, the temps would reach the high 90's. While that doesn't seem so bad to those living in AZ, the author goes on to describe what 80% or 90% humidity will do to temperatures like that. A 90 degree day with 90% humidity will make it fee like 120. And so that phrase "it's not the heat, it's the humidity that kills" really makes sense.
Also factoring into the tragedy were the tenements on the lower east side, the lack of wind or any kind of breeze, and the officials not stepping in sooner to try to help people. They could've done many things to make sure that these people were able to cool off at night, but they only did those things AFTER the 10 day stretch of high temperatures was over.
This is also a story about Bryan and his horrible horrible luck when it came to his presidential campaign. Up until this time, he was a great speaker, a winning candidate. But he changed his game plan on the night of his speech in Madison Square Garden. That change, along with the horrible heat of 17,000 people in one place had disastrous effects on his campaign.
Finally, I really liked how the author tried to give many of the deaths a name and a face. He told about their families, where they came from, their kids and how they died. At the end of the book, there is an appendix with as many bios of the nearly 1300 dead that he could find. You could tell that he wanted to pay respect to these poor, hard working and often times babies that were unable to escape the oven of a city.
A good non-fiction story with a lot of heart. Just my kind of book!
In 1896 there was about 10 days in NYC when the temperatures didn't come down out of the high 80's. In the middle of the day, the temps would reach the high 90's. While that doesn't seem so bad to those living in AZ, the author goes on to describe what 80% or 90% humidity will do to temperatures like that. A 90 degree day with 90% humidity will make it fee like 120. And so that phrase "it's not the heat, it's the humidity that kills" really makes sense.
Also factoring into the tragedy were the tenements on the lower east side, the lack of wind or any kind of breeze, and the officials not stepping in sooner to try to help people. They could've done many things to make sure that these people were able to cool off at night, but they only did those things AFTER the 10 day stretch of high temperatures was over.
This is also a story about Bryan and his horrible horrible luck when it came to his presidential campaign. Up until this time, he was a great speaker, a winning candidate. But he changed his game plan on the night of his speech in Madison Square Garden. That change, along with the horrible heat of 17,000 people in one place had disastrous effects on his campaign.
Finally, I really liked how the author tried to give many of the deaths a name and a face. He told about their families, where they came from, their kids and how they died. At the end of the book, there is an appendix with as many bios of the nearly 1300 dead that he could find. You could tell that he wanted to pay respect to these poor, hard working and often times babies that were unable to escape the oven of a city.
A good non-fiction story with a lot of heart. Just my kind of book!
December 1, 2014
Hot Time in the Old Town tells the story of a forgotten natural disaster. Edward P. Kohn makes the case that a heat wave is one of the most deadly natural disasters, particularly in the tenement districts of New York City in the 19th century. The tales of suffering due to the heat wave are not detailed due to the nature of the medical record keeping and Kohn often describes the same scenes of dead horses in the street. The book is repetitive at times. Kohn also does not exactly talk about how the heat wave made Teddy Roosevelt. He argues that the decisions he made in his position of power in New York city showed his personality, which could be true, but the reaction and feelings for Teddy Roosevelt, which led to him becoming president, are not apparent. The title is a bit of a stretch as Teddy Roosevelt was fairly unpopular in New York City at the time. Kohn does not show that he was "made" in the town. The book also focuses on the presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan more than Roosevelt. Bryan's famed Madison Square Garden Speech to accept the presidential nomination for the Democratic Party occurs during the heat wave and Kohn argues that the overall failure of the speech was due to the heat but dispels that in almost the same breath as saying his failure was because he read from a manuscript. The failure of Bryan is merely a coincidence with the heat wave and Kohn does not make a great argument directly relating the two events. With all of the issues of the book, it is a solid description of 19th century urban history.
August 9, 2011
I wanted to love this book. I think my expectations were too high. One of the reasons I picked this book was because of Roosevelt, sadly there was less of Roosevelt and more of William Jennings Bryan. While Bryan is an interesting historical figure, the book clearly states in the title "the Making of Theodore Roosevelt" while it should have been "the Unmaking of William Jennings Bryan." Honestly, I don't care that much about the bi-metalism debate. What I do care about is the suffering the occurred in the tenements as well as Roosevelt's response. Unfortunately neither of those were dealt with satisfactorily.
There are certainly interesting comparisons that can be drawn between 1896 and the current summer. Beyond that....meh.
There are certainly interesting comparisons that can be drawn between 1896 and the current summer. Beyond that....meh.
February 3, 2020
The challenge of Devil in the White City, but worse. A straight up narrative of the heat wave would have been better. Those sections were very interesting.
September 23, 2010
This book is an unfortunate example of overambition. Hot Time in the Old Town, in addition to being an earworm for anyone who ever went to Girl Scout camp, attempts to tell three interlocking story: the rise of Theodore Roosevelt's political career, the collapse of William Jennings Bryan's 1896 presidential campaign, and the forgotten tale of a ten-day stretch in August of that year when the heat index in New York City remained well over 100 degrees, due to a disastrous combination of high temperatures and humidity--a heat wave that killed about 1,300 people. All three stories are interesting and deserving of attention--the book was never boring--but the connections between them are often tenuous, and the chapters jump from one to the other with little transition, giving the narrative a jerky quality.
Roosevelt was police commissioner at the time, and made some laudable decisions that helped the sweltering populace, especially the denizens of the oven-like Lower East Side tenements: police wagons were deputized as extra ambulances, and towards the end of the heat wave, officers handed out free ice to the poor. When Roosevelt learned of the rampant fraud going on (some families sent multiple children to pick up ice & resold it; wealthy people who could afford ice lined up with the indigent), he re-organized the distribution by giving individual beat cops vouchers to distribute to the families they knew from experience were the neediest. But other than these two initiatives, Roosevelt had little involvement in the events of the heat wave, and he spent most of the time at his house on Long Island, well out of the city.
Bryan, for his part, arrived in NYC at the height of the disaster to give a speech at Madison Square Garden--accepting his nomination to the Democratic ticket and bringing his Western populism to the hostile--but crucial--East Coast. I am not going to go into the debate then raging regarding "bimetallism"--tying the dollar to both silver AND gold--since although it was the cornerstone of Bryan's campaign, it is eye-glazingly dull at the best of times, and especially when one has been reading harrowing tales of tenement dwellers driven to sleep on their roofs falling off in the middle of the night and the epidemic of horse carcasses rotting in the streets. True, Bryan's speech went over like a lead balloon, badly enough that his campaign strategists cancelled the rest of his East Coast tour--but I just don't buy that it was all due to the heat.
So Hot Time in the Old Town was ultimately disappointing, in structure if not in content--I think that the heat wave itself would have made more a fascinating book without trying to tie it into the politics of the time. I also feel like no book should ever have both a prologue and an introduction--or, even worse, a "conclusion," an "epilogue," and a postscript. Seriously? Three endings? Come on.
However, the author did quote Roosevelt's 1891 book on the history of New York, which I am taking as my motto in tough times from now on: "[New York's] life is so intense and varied, and so full of manifold possibilities, that it has a special fascination for ambitious and high-spirited men of every kind, whether they wish to enjoy the fruits of past toil, or whether they have yet their fortunes to make, and feel confident that they can swim in troubled waters--for weaklings have small chance of forging to the front against the turbulent tide of our city life. The truth is that every man worth his salt has open to him in New York a career of boundless usefulness and interest." A-men, Teddy!
Roosevelt was police commissioner at the time, and made some laudable decisions that helped the sweltering populace, especially the denizens of the oven-like Lower East Side tenements: police wagons were deputized as extra ambulances, and towards the end of the heat wave, officers handed out free ice to the poor. When Roosevelt learned of the rampant fraud going on (some families sent multiple children to pick up ice & resold it; wealthy people who could afford ice lined up with the indigent), he re-organized the distribution by giving individual beat cops vouchers to distribute to the families they knew from experience were the neediest. But other than these two initiatives, Roosevelt had little involvement in the events of the heat wave, and he spent most of the time at his house on Long Island, well out of the city.
Bryan, for his part, arrived in NYC at the height of the disaster to give a speech at Madison Square Garden--accepting his nomination to the Democratic ticket and bringing his Western populism to the hostile--but crucial--East Coast. I am not going to go into the debate then raging regarding "bimetallism"--tying the dollar to both silver AND gold--since although it was the cornerstone of Bryan's campaign, it is eye-glazingly dull at the best of times, and especially when one has been reading harrowing tales of tenement dwellers driven to sleep on their roofs falling off in the middle of the night and the epidemic of horse carcasses rotting in the streets. True, Bryan's speech went over like a lead balloon, badly enough that his campaign strategists cancelled the rest of his East Coast tour--but I just don't buy that it was all due to the heat.
So Hot Time in the Old Town was ultimately disappointing, in structure if not in content--I think that the heat wave itself would have made more a fascinating book without trying to tie it into the politics of the time. I also feel like no book should ever have both a prologue and an introduction--or, even worse, a "conclusion," an "epilogue," and a postscript. Seriously? Three endings? Come on.
However, the author did quote Roosevelt's 1891 book on the history of New York, which I am taking as my motto in tough times from now on: "[New York's] life is so intense and varied, and so full of manifold possibilities, that it has a special fascination for ambitious and high-spirited men of every kind, whether they wish to enjoy the fruits of past toil, or whether they have yet their fortunes to make, and feel confident that they can swim in troubled waters--for weaklings have small chance of forging to the front against the turbulent tide of our city life. The truth is that every man worth his salt has open to him in New York a career of boundless usefulness and interest." A-men, Teddy!
August 22, 2021
This would have been better as two separate works. The author clearly has a deep interest in the political campaigns of Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan. The 1896 heat wave had little to do with either man's political history other than the fact that Bryan gave a terrible speech at Madison Square Gardens smack in the middle of the 1896 heat wave, and Roosevelt served as NYC police commissioner at the time. The portions of the book addressing the heat wave are interesting and would have been more interesting had the author focused on Roosevelt's role and how it shaped his career (as the title suggests). In its current state, the work delivers to the reader a disjointed and disorganized string of unrelated topics whose only connection is their concurrent place on a timeline.
August 3, 2011
This book seemed timely, given the current meteorological and political climate. Unfortunately it was less about the heat wave and it's impact on Roosevelt than it was about the downfall of the political ambitions of William Jennings Bryan. The author should have chosen a different title.
It was an interesting read, but definitely not the one I was looking for when I purchased this book. A book about the 1896 heat wave and how it impacted Theodore Roosevelt... now that's a book I'd like to read.
It was an interesting read, but definitely not the one I was looking for when I purchased this book. A book about the 1896 heat wave and how it impacted Theodore Roosevelt... now that's a book I'd like to read.
September 10, 2019
”Manhattan Island was an inferno of brick and stone radiating heat deadly in its intensity. And over all, gray as the presence of death which it held, was the pall of humidity.”
There are some things I liked about Edward P. Kohn’s Hot Time in the Old Town.
The book tells the story of the great New York heat wave of 1886, which claimed some 1,300 lives in the city. For the emergency manager and the amateur disaster buff (like me!), Kohn gets a lot of points for his observations on the nature of climatological catastrophe and the public perception of risk. Drown more than a thousand people in a hurricane and the event is etched in the history books. Extreme heat, on the other hand, kills many more people than tropical storms or tornadoes in an average year but seldom gets the same amount of press because of its insidious invisibility. Kohn does a capable job then of rescuing the 1886 catastrophe from obscurity.
Where the book goes astray (for me anyway) is in the politics. Admittedly, it’s there in the sub-title: The Great Heat Wave of 1886 and the making of Theodore Roosevelt, but the subplot of Roosevelt’s fledging political career (coupled with the esoterica of 1880s party politics and the ‘bimetallism’ debate) smothers the narrative in a scratchy blanket that feels a lot like padding. I think Kohn made a mistake in trying to turn the spotlight on Roosevelt because the more interesting political slant — at least as it connects to weather — is in the contrasting campaign strategies of future U.S. President William McKinley and his opponent William Jennings Bryant. Bryant’s failed New York City speech, delivered in a sweltering Madison Square Garden, is compelling and not the first example of nature (and natural disaster) influencing a presidency. That plot line (coupled with heat wave) probably would have been enough.
Roosevelt, on the other hand, feels like a distraction, perhaps better suited to a notable cameo. Roosevelt’s innovative ‘free ice’ distributions during the height of the heat wave do mark an important step on the road toward greater government responsibility for emergency management. So in that, he does deserve mention ... but beyond that first pioneer effort, the future President doesn’t exactly add much to the book.
Final Verdict: If your profession (or passion) is disaster management than Hot Time in the Old Town may be for you, describing another little notch in the American timeline of the development of emergency management. For the casual reader, though, the heavy political history might be hard to get through. I wish this one had been a bit leaner, sidelining Roosevelt for a tighter narrative on the heat wave and the disastrous consequences it had on the presidential bid of William Jennings Bryant.
P.S. One nice little anecdote in the book concerns the Weather Bureau’s man in New York ... William Dunn. In a bit of reversal to what’s going on in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian and the controversy over doctored forecast maps, Kohn reports that after a week of unbearable heat, Dunn had given up answering his phone. Exhausted by reporters’ inquiries about the record temperatures, the weatherman took a trip out of the sweltering city to the breezy eastern tip of Long Island to ‘recalibrate instruments.’ “When Dunn he quits his post things must be in a bad way,” the New York World paper reported. “And they are.”
January 4, 2021
Probably 3 1/2 stars. Too long to conclude. Is one of the hardest parts of writing a book knowing how to end it? Especially in non-fiction? It wasn't enough to have a chapter entitled Conclusion, he also had to add an Epilogue.
I picked this up some time ago as the title reminded me of a recent heat wave we had endured in Chicago. They had ventilated trucks stacked up outside the Cook County morgue. So many people had died. But with each serious heat wave we learn - whether it is that we need "cooling centers", to keep the parks and beaches open at night, etc.
The heat wave of 1896 occurred before much was known about the accumulative effect of heat, especially in the city. Kohn includes charts and schedules in appendices showing how it takes a few days for people/horses to start dropping like flies. They had only just recently installed "floating baths" on the rivers. Many people still lived in tenements. And this is where most deaths occurred. Admittedly some of these deaths were from people falling off the roof. They go to the roof because of the cooler breezes; however, the tar has been baking under the sun all day, so not necessarily cooler and they find a place to go to sleep and subsequently roll off the roof in their sleep.
The heat wave didn't just hit New York but much of the country, including St. Louis and Chicago, among other large cities. Thrown into this heat wave, the democrats have just nominated William Jennings Bryan for president in Chicago and he gives his "Cross of Gold" speech. He was known as the Boy Orator. Does a whistle-stop tour to New York where he gives a speech at Madison Square Garden. They expect a great oration and receive a lukewarm reading of his speech. And because of the heat wave the police were trying to control who got in. The cooling center in the basement (?) only received a couple of cops with exhaustion.
Various city officials, including Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt and the parks commissioner, tried to alleviate suffering - flushing the streets, providing free ice, etc. Of course, it didn't help that many who could afford it, including TR, went to their places on Long Island and near the Shore for much of the period. After all, if you can afford to leave in a heat wave to a cooler Clime you do it. That's still true today.
But many couldn't and many died.
Horses were dropping dead in the street and staying there. There was some kind of contract dispute with the removal company. Tailors were also on strike.
Fairly interesting book. He just took longer to end than I thought he should.
As noted, there are appendices - giving short biographies of some of the dead. Many people died anonymously. People didn't always have identification on them, even if they had any. Probably one of the reasons identification is now required. ID didn't always help. An example is given of a man who collapsed on the street and the police noted his identification and sent him to the hospital. The man's relatives contacted the hospital. Hospital didn't believe they had anyone there by that name. A relative found him in the hallway. The hospital had been too busy to look for his ID. The usual cause of death listed was "isolation".
I picked this up some time ago as the title reminded me of a recent heat wave we had endured in Chicago. They had ventilated trucks stacked up outside the Cook County morgue. So many people had died. But with each serious heat wave we learn - whether it is that we need "cooling centers", to keep the parks and beaches open at night, etc.
The heat wave of 1896 occurred before much was known about the accumulative effect of heat, especially in the city. Kohn includes charts and schedules in appendices showing how it takes a few days for people/horses to start dropping like flies. They had only just recently installed "floating baths" on the rivers. Many people still lived in tenements. And this is where most deaths occurred. Admittedly some of these deaths were from people falling off the roof. They go to the roof because of the cooler breezes; however, the tar has been baking under the sun all day, so not necessarily cooler and they find a place to go to sleep and subsequently roll off the roof in their sleep.
The heat wave didn't just hit New York but much of the country, including St. Louis and Chicago, among other large cities. Thrown into this heat wave, the democrats have just nominated William Jennings Bryan for president in Chicago and he gives his "Cross of Gold" speech. He was known as the Boy Orator. Does a whistle-stop tour to New York where he gives a speech at Madison Square Garden. They expect a great oration and receive a lukewarm reading of his speech. And because of the heat wave the police were trying to control who got in. The cooling center in the basement (?) only received a couple of cops with exhaustion.
Various city officials, including Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt and the parks commissioner, tried to alleviate suffering - flushing the streets, providing free ice, etc. Of course, it didn't help that many who could afford it, including TR, went to their places on Long Island and near the Shore for much of the period. After all, if you can afford to leave in a heat wave to a cooler Clime you do it. That's still true today.
But many couldn't and many died.
Horses were dropping dead in the street and staying there. There was some kind of contract dispute with the removal company. Tailors were also on strike.
Fairly interesting book. He just took longer to end than I thought he should.
As noted, there are appendices - giving short biographies of some of the dead. Many people died anonymously. People didn't always have identification on them, even if they had any. Probably one of the reasons identification is now required. ID didn't always help. An example is given of a man who collapsed on the street and the police noted his identification and sent him to the hospital. The man's relatives contacted the hospital. Hospital didn't believe they had anyone there by that name. A relative found him in the hallway. The hospital had been too busy to look for his ID. The usual cause of death listed was "isolation".
January 19, 2011
I read "Hot Time in the Old Town" in four days, and for most of that time it was hard to put down (the ending dragged a bit). The book purports to be about the critical period of Theodore Roosevelt's life when he was a NYC police commissioner (during which time the heat wave of August 1896 killed thousands), but it ended up being less about Roosevelt than about the horrors of tenement life, the William Jennings Bryan / William McKinley race for president--and of course, the events leading up to and including the heat wave that helped turn Bryan's Madison Square Garden speech into a political disaster, effectively ending his run for president.
The book reminded me somewhat of "The Devil in the White City," which was also a great mix of history and biography (with a healthy dose of murder mystery tossed in for good measure). Although "Hot Time" doesn't track a Chicago serial killer, it proceeds at the same breathtaking pace, recounting biographical facts and historical events so effortlessly and compellingly that it reads like a novel.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the picture it paints of the Republican and Democratic parties, which by the end of the nineteenth century had apparently already evolved from their Civil War era predecessors into the respective forms they have today: the Democratic Party, even then concerned primarily with lost causes, union interests, moral issues, and the social problems plaguing poor and middle-class Americans, but too disorganized, poorly funded and ideologically fractured to solve many of those problems or to unify a winning percentage of voters; the Republican Party, already driven by huge amounts of corporate money, focused primarily on protecting the interests of the wealthy, and even a century ago, devilishly efficient at 'staying on message' (Sound familiar? This tactic was already being advised in the Republicans' 400 page 1896 campaign handbook) and insulating their candidate behind layers of protective propaganda and well-trained handlers.
Also interesting in “Hot Time” were its sporadic references to “bi-metallism,” an important plank in Bryan's political platform, the primary concern of the “Silver Republicans” who jumped party lines to support Bryan, and a hotly debated topic in 1896. Unfortunately, aside from a bit in the preface, the author doesn’t explain nearly enough about the bimetallist debate and says virtually nothing concerning its history, about which I knew nothing. This--and the annoying lack of footnotes--would be my only major criticisms of the book (a minor criticism is that it is repetitive in parts). These are puzzling defects, since so much of the book absolutely requires at least a cursory understanding of bimetallism, and since so many of the author's claims invite further research or spark a desire to hunt down sources. So, if you’re only interested in the review, you can stop reading here; above-mentioned caveats aside, I thought “Hot Time in the Old Town” was a pretty good book. If you’re planning on reading it, however, you might want to read the next two paragraphs, which constitute my poor attempt to summarize the six hours or so of research I did to make sense of the book’s numerous “bimetallist” and “Silverite” references.
A bimetal monetary standard is one in which currency is backed by reserves of both gold and silver, instead of by gold alone, or by neither gold nor silver. During the “free banking” era prior to the Civil War, when chartered banks were allowed to print their own currency, the U.S. used both gold and silver coins (whose face value roughly equaled their precious-metal worth) and over 7,000 (!) different sizes and designs of currency notes (whose face value was supposed to be backed by precious-metal reserves or government securities) printed by over 1,600 different state and private banks. This wild proliferation of paper notes predictably led to considerable confusion and widespread counterfeiting. A U.S. Treasury Department webpage currently estimates that roughly a third of all paper money in circulation by the end of the Civil War was counterfeit—though the U.S. government itself apparently contributed to this problem by secretly counterfeiting Confederate currency in order to undermine Confederate war efforts (a fact mysteriously omitted from the Treasury Department webpage). In 1861, to supplement dwindling coin reserves, and further finance the Civil War, the U.S. Treasury began printing for the first time since the Revolutionary War its own non-interest bearing “Demand” Notes, which could be exchanged “on demand” for an equal value of precious-metal coin (though this practice was halted before the end of the war in order to preserve gold and silver). Over the next several years, paper Demand notes were successively replaced by U.S. Promissory Notes (commonly called Greenbacks due to their green color), by United States Notes (legal tender), and in 1866, by National Bank Notes—all of which were standardized and detailed in various ways to reduce counterfeiting.
It had been common practice during these years to exchange (for a negligible minting fee) mined or prospected gold bullion for an equal value of minted gold coinage. “Silverites,” or “Free Silver” advocates, favored a monetary policy that would allow a similar “free” coinage of silver. In 1863, the government began issuing gold certificates for gold in an effort to replenish precious metal supplies, and ten years later, in 1873, the Fourth Coinage Act placed the U.S. on a mono-metallic gold standard by demonetizing silver. While the government also began issuing silver certificates in 1878, the Coinage Act had significantly devalued the silver then being mined in great quantities throughout the West (which is why it was derisively called “The Crime of ‘73” by its opponents). The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 required the government to buy silver, and this bolstered somewhat the demand for it, and thereby bolstered its value as well. But that legislation reduced the profits of North-eastern bankers and investors by increasing inflation and thus decreasing the high value of the interest that borrowers (including many farmers from the West and Midwest) were paying on bank loans. Bank and farm failures, railroad collapses, and a run on gold initiated the Panic of 1893. In response, Grover Cleveland repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which again drove down the price of silver and decreased inflation (which pleased eastern capitalists, but hurt struggling Westerners and Midwesterners indebted to Eastern banks). This repeal, coupled with the long-standing feud between wealthy Eastern lenders and needy Western borrowers over the monetary role of silver, is what triggered W. J. Bryan’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the Chicago convention, engendered the “Silverite” Democratic platform of 1896, split the Republican Party into Eastern “McKinley men” and Western “Silver Republicans,” and primed the 1896 presidential election for a “bi-metal” showdown. So, there you have it—as well as I can tell it.
The book reminded me somewhat of "The Devil in the White City," which was also a great mix of history and biography (with a healthy dose of murder mystery tossed in for good measure). Although "Hot Time" doesn't track a Chicago serial killer, it proceeds at the same breathtaking pace, recounting biographical facts and historical events so effortlessly and compellingly that it reads like a novel.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the picture it paints of the Republican and Democratic parties, which by the end of the nineteenth century had apparently already evolved from their Civil War era predecessors into the respective forms they have today: the Democratic Party, even then concerned primarily with lost causes, union interests, moral issues, and the social problems plaguing poor and middle-class Americans, but too disorganized, poorly funded and ideologically fractured to solve many of those problems or to unify a winning percentage of voters; the Republican Party, already driven by huge amounts of corporate money, focused primarily on protecting the interests of the wealthy, and even a century ago, devilishly efficient at 'staying on message' (Sound familiar? This tactic was already being advised in the Republicans' 400 page 1896 campaign handbook) and insulating their candidate behind layers of protective propaganda and well-trained handlers.
Also interesting in “Hot Time” were its sporadic references to “bi-metallism,” an important plank in Bryan's political platform, the primary concern of the “Silver Republicans” who jumped party lines to support Bryan, and a hotly debated topic in 1896. Unfortunately, aside from a bit in the preface, the author doesn’t explain nearly enough about the bimetallist debate and says virtually nothing concerning its history, about which I knew nothing. This--and the annoying lack of footnotes--would be my only major criticisms of the book (a minor criticism is that it is repetitive in parts). These are puzzling defects, since so much of the book absolutely requires at least a cursory understanding of bimetallism, and since so many of the author's claims invite further research or spark a desire to hunt down sources. So, if you’re only interested in the review, you can stop reading here; above-mentioned caveats aside, I thought “Hot Time in the Old Town” was a pretty good book. If you’re planning on reading it, however, you might want to read the next two paragraphs, which constitute my poor attempt to summarize the six hours or so of research I did to make sense of the book’s numerous “bimetallist” and “Silverite” references.
A bimetal monetary standard is one in which currency is backed by reserves of both gold and silver, instead of by gold alone, or by neither gold nor silver. During the “free banking” era prior to the Civil War, when chartered banks were allowed to print their own currency, the U.S. used both gold and silver coins (whose face value roughly equaled their precious-metal worth) and over 7,000 (!) different sizes and designs of currency notes (whose face value was supposed to be backed by precious-metal reserves or government securities) printed by over 1,600 different state and private banks. This wild proliferation of paper notes predictably led to considerable confusion and widespread counterfeiting. A U.S. Treasury Department webpage currently estimates that roughly a third of all paper money in circulation by the end of the Civil War was counterfeit—though the U.S. government itself apparently contributed to this problem by secretly counterfeiting Confederate currency in order to undermine Confederate war efforts (a fact mysteriously omitted from the Treasury Department webpage). In 1861, to supplement dwindling coin reserves, and further finance the Civil War, the U.S. Treasury began printing for the first time since the Revolutionary War its own non-interest bearing “Demand” Notes, which could be exchanged “on demand” for an equal value of precious-metal coin (though this practice was halted before the end of the war in order to preserve gold and silver). Over the next several years, paper Demand notes were successively replaced by U.S. Promissory Notes (commonly called Greenbacks due to their green color), by United States Notes (legal tender), and in 1866, by National Bank Notes—all of which were standardized and detailed in various ways to reduce counterfeiting.
It had been common practice during these years to exchange (for a negligible minting fee) mined or prospected gold bullion for an equal value of minted gold coinage. “Silverites,” or “Free Silver” advocates, favored a monetary policy that would allow a similar “free” coinage of silver. In 1863, the government began issuing gold certificates for gold in an effort to replenish precious metal supplies, and ten years later, in 1873, the Fourth Coinage Act placed the U.S. on a mono-metallic gold standard by demonetizing silver. While the government also began issuing silver certificates in 1878, the Coinage Act had significantly devalued the silver then being mined in great quantities throughout the West (which is why it was derisively called “The Crime of ‘73” by its opponents). The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 required the government to buy silver, and this bolstered somewhat the demand for it, and thereby bolstered its value as well. But that legislation reduced the profits of North-eastern bankers and investors by increasing inflation and thus decreasing the high value of the interest that borrowers (including many farmers from the West and Midwest) were paying on bank loans. Bank and farm failures, railroad collapses, and a run on gold initiated the Panic of 1893. In response, Grover Cleveland repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which again drove down the price of silver and decreased inflation (which pleased eastern capitalists, but hurt struggling Westerners and Midwesterners indebted to Eastern banks). This repeal, coupled with the long-standing feud between wealthy Eastern lenders and needy Western borrowers over the monetary role of silver, is what triggered W. J. Bryan’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the Chicago convention, engendered the “Silverite” Democratic platform of 1896, split the Republican Party into Eastern “McKinley men” and Western “Silver Republicans,” and primed the 1896 presidential election for a “bi-metal” showdown. So, there you have it—as well as I can tell it.
June 30, 2022
Edward Kohn’s recounting of a disastrous heat wave in New York City in 1896 is engrossing for its content, its portrayal of the desperate lives of tenement dwellers at the end of the 19th century, and its suggestion that the disaster had a lasting impact on the outcome of the 1896 presidential election and also on the outlook and beliefs of Theodore Roosevelt, acting Police Commissioner at the time.
The writing is a bit repetitive, as Kohn recounts some incidents and draws some conclusions more than once. But the subject has so many parallels to our present time, with climate change threatening more deadly heat waves and government services strained to their utmost against an unanticipated natural disaster (read “Pandemic” or “wildfire”), that “Hot Time in the Old Down” is well worth reading.
I had not known, by the way, that “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” was a Teddy Roosevelt campaign theme song.
June 25, 2025
Half the book was about the political situation that had little to nothing to do with the heat wave. If the focus had been more on how the heat wave shaped or indicated Roosevelt's later actions during the Great Depression, it would have been a worthwhile read. Another issue is the judgmentalism of the author. The author states that if the actions taken at the end of the heat wave had started earlier, hundreds of lives might have been saved. Yeah, that's true. And isn't hindsight grand? If they'd just known what was going to happen. But they didn't and they were working with the information they had available at the time. a ten day heat wave was not normal. During a period of incredibly high immigration added to the tragedy. If the author had stuck to the heatwave and maybe discussed Roosevelt's actions during it, this book would have been 100x better.
July 18, 2020
This is a slice of history book that is slightly overambitious in trying to tackle three simultaneous threads of William Jennings Bryan's 1896 Presidential Campaign, Roosevelt's early political career, and the heatwave of 1896 in NYC. While all of those things were happening simultaneously the author had some trouble threading them altogether and so this mostly read like a political history with some interesting facts about the heatwave.
My personal preference would have been more a social history of the heatwave and how it affected Roosevelt's Future Progressive Agenda, which was hinted at here but not ultimately delved into. However, if you are interested in a political history of the period I am sure this would be fascinating as it was well researched and written.
My personal preference would have been more a social history of the heatwave and how it affected Roosevelt's Future Progressive Agenda, which was hinted at here but not ultimately delved into. However, if you are interested in a political history of the period I am sure this would be fascinating as it was well researched and written.
December 27, 2020
Kohn's style of writing is similar to Erik Larson. In this book, he writes about the 1896 heat wave that killed a few thousand in New York, especially in the crowded, unsanitary tenements, along with Theodore Roosevelt's early career and the collapse of William Jennings Bryan's bid for President. Why Bryan isn't listed in the title isn't clear since at least half if not more of the book is on him.
Given the increases in temperatures today due to global warming, this is an interesting and timely subject. The connection Kohn makes with the heat wave and the careers of Roosevelt and Bryan is also interesting though I think it seems a little more of a stretch to make the case that Roosevelt's career was significantly helped by his efforts during the heat wave.
Worth a read.
Given the increases in temperatures today due to global warming, this is an interesting and timely subject. The connection Kohn makes with the heat wave and the careers of Roosevelt and Bryan is also interesting though I think it seems a little more of a stretch to make the case that Roosevelt's career was significantly helped by his efforts during the heat wave.
Worth a read.
May 10, 2023
Much of this book has little to do with the heat wave that dominates its title, and to a similar extent the same is true of its coverage regarding Theodore Roosevelt. The McKinley-Bryan political competition of 1896 often takes precedence in the author's offering. While some parts, Chapter 6 for example, address the ways in which New York City leaders and others tackled the heat disaster, ultimately the event is little more than a backdrop to the political activities that are the primary focus. Disturbingly, citations are lacking aside from those for an appendix, this despite the book's many direct quotes.
March 25, 2020
Heat waves are, as Kohn writes, silent and slow killers of the most vulnerable living in modern cities. The book weaves together the events in NY City that occurred August 4-14, 1896 when a heat wave slowly killed 1300 people. However the scope is too limited to say much about heat waves. And evidence too weak to support his bold claim that events that week destroyed William Jennings Bryan and formed the character of Teddy Roosevelt.
August 25, 2022
I learned a lot, but I’m not sure this book knew what it wanted to be about. Is it about a heat wave or about the 1886 presidential campaign? Theoretically it’s a synthesis of the two and I think that’s where it falls short. I think the heat wave would have been a interesting chapter, but it’s hard to stretch people dying from heat exhaustion and the innovative approaches to dealing with it (hosing down the streets and distributing ice) into the better part of a book.
April 2, 2023
This was not quite what I expected. I was looking for more on the heat wave and what TR did to address this when he was President of the NY Police Commission. Instead this is mostly about what he learned from his failures, the Bryan McKinley campaign of 1896 and how Theodore Roosevelt angled for a federal appointment when he knew that his days in NY were numbered. Still its an entertaining little history and a good portrait of NY during a serious catastrophe.
October 2, 2019
An excellent book about ten days in the summer of 1896 when a heat wave killed 1,300. The book also focuses on the election between McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. I knew nothing of this period of history so found this non-fiction book which reads like fiction to be very informative.
Highly recommended
Highly recommended
April 11, 2023
Fascinating look at a natural disaster from 125+ years ago. However, some parts are repetitive (how many times did I need to be told that folks continued to die after the heat abated?) and the author fashions some tacky uses of the word “pathetic” that are cringeworthy. All in all, a thorough recounting of this extensive tragedy.
November 30, 2025
Misleading title- I would have liked learning more about the heat wave and it’s primarily tenement-living victims and less about presidential politics. And to say that the heat wave “made” Theodore Roosevelt is quite the stretch- the author admits that he spent the majority of the heat wave at his summer home on Long Island.
January 7, 2018
Interesting read, half history about the 1896 heat wave in New York and half political history about the early stages of the 1896 presidential campaign though keep a chronology of Theodore Roosevelt handy if you are not familiar with his history as the author jumps around a lot.
August 25, 2024
This book was wooden. It failed to engage my interest. It is a mishmash of political information that is irrelevant to the heat wave and too many statistics about this natural disaster. The author did diligent research but the book does not come together.
August 20, 2017
Informative.
June 2, 2019
Incredible! Hard to believe that heat waves kill more people across the globe each year than all other natural disasters combined and yet we hear the least about them. Great story!
December 8, 2020
Agree with other reviewers that the title is a bit misleading and more coverage of William Jennings Bryan's presidential run than "making of" Roosevelt at least until the Epilogue.
October 13, 2022
2.7- Theodore roosevelt and the heat wave was a let down
November 20, 2023
Story was a bit drawn out with some information being repeated. I didn't mind some of the politics mixed in with the information about the heat wave but sometimes it was way too much
January 13, 2024
49: set in a city starting with the letter "M" [Manhattan]
November 11, 2010
Edward P. Kohn has a strange little book here.
Though the talk on the book tour is tantalizing, the author's interviews are basically summaries of Hot Time. If you heard Mr. Kohn on Fresh Air, like I did, you've essentially already experienced everything the reader will find within Hot Time's 250 or so pages. Reading the book is little more than formal consummation of an (admittedly) good interview.
But that doesn't speak to what is strange about Hot Time in the Old Town. The subtitle reads: "The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt." Neither the heat wave nor its impact on Roosevelt are the focus of the book. Not quite. Instead, Hot Time is an oscillating sweep of three subjects, which I'll enumerate briefly.
1. Hot Time in the Old Town is, at it's best, a reminder of how closely the 19th century American lived with death. Politically, the heat wave of 1896 is a reminder - in the form of a vignette - of why the Progressive era was critical to the country's 20th century narrative. The 1,300 deaths attributed to the week long heat wave may be blamed in greater degree to the squalid conditions of tenement housing, structured to prey on poor immigrant and laboring families than to the heat itself (which, to an Alabamian induces little awe).
2. After a grisly account of hellish tenements and horse carcasses, Hot Time freezes the moment when William Jennings Bryan's 1896 presidential bid lost momentum. After creating an audacious zeitgeist of hope (that would be familiar in the era of Obama) following the "Cross of Gold" speech, candidate Bryan chased gaffe with a dead on arrival, much-hyped speech at Madison Square Garden - where spectators initially crushed one another for seating, only to leave en masse when Bryan came across like Nixon in the televised 1960 debate.
3. Finally, there's the part about (then New York City police commissioner) Theodore Roosevelt's role in both the emergency response to the heat wave and the national presidential election. While it is interesting that the scion Roosevelt had a part in both stories, the two stories are not necessarily related. Circumstantial coincidences suggest a link that is actually more literary than historical/sociological.
None of this is meant to say any of the three subjects are in any way unworthy of scholarship. In fact, each are immensely worthy. Point one is worth including in a book about either the Progressive era or the evolution of American cities between 1820 and 1919. Point two is clearly an important chapter in any ambitious biography of William Jennings Bryan. The same goes with point three, with regard to Theodore Roosevelt. The 1896 election is itself worthy of study; the events in Hot Time would necessarily form a key pivot in any such study.
The problem is that Mr. Kohn's book lacks any of the ambition needed to contextualize any of its three subjects. While Hot Time is promoted as - and probably intended to be - a beach/airport read, it lacks the cadence of the mass market non-fiction epitomized by Simon Winchester or Jon Krakauer. At 250 pages and rife with sensational detail, Hot Time should go down smoothly and easily. Instead, reading the book is a bit of a chore.
All this considered, I still might be inclined to rate Hot Time in the Old Town at a solid - if average - three stars, if the bizarre postscript were not tacked on at the very end of the book (after two successive chapters titled "Conclusion" and "Epilogue"). Kohn's final words suggest his improbable thesis was actually to inspire readers to think more about quality of life issues and emergency planning in a world that is still following a trend of urbanization. If so, that is not what I got from it.
Kohn may also be implying that climate change is the new tenement housing in the continuum of pestilence the urban poor are forced to contend with. Fine. But the sum of all of these parts is not a tidy narrative that details a "heat wave" and "the making of Theodore Roosevelt." And that is the principal problem with Hot Time.
There was a short circuit somewhere in the chain connecting author and publisher. The manuscript should have been sent back. If Hot Time was a plate of food, it never would have left a respectable kitchen.
Though the talk on the book tour is tantalizing, the author's interviews are basically summaries of Hot Time. If you heard Mr. Kohn on Fresh Air, like I did, you've essentially already experienced everything the reader will find within Hot Time's 250 or so pages. Reading the book is little more than formal consummation of an (admittedly) good interview.
But that doesn't speak to what is strange about Hot Time in the Old Town. The subtitle reads: "The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt." Neither the heat wave nor its impact on Roosevelt are the focus of the book. Not quite. Instead, Hot Time is an oscillating sweep of three subjects, which I'll enumerate briefly.
1. Hot Time in the Old Town is, at it's best, a reminder of how closely the 19th century American lived with death. Politically, the heat wave of 1896 is a reminder - in the form of a vignette - of why the Progressive era was critical to the country's 20th century narrative. The 1,300 deaths attributed to the week long heat wave may be blamed in greater degree to the squalid conditions of tenement housing, structured to prey on poor immigrant and laboring families than to the heat itself (which, to an Alabamian induces little awe).
2. After a grisly account of hellish tenements and horse carcasses, Hot Time freezes the moment when William Jennings Bryan's 1896 presidential bid lost momentum. After creating an audacious zeitgeist of hope (that would be familiar in the era of Obama) following the "Cross of Gold" speech, candidate Bryan chased gaffe with a dead on arrival, much-hyped speech at Madison Square Garden - where spectators initially crushed one another for seating, only to leave en masse when Bryan came across like Nixon in the televised 1960 debate.
3. Finally, there's the part about (then New York City police commissioner) Theodore Roosevelt's role in both the emergency response to the heat wave and the national presidential election. While it is interesting that the scion Roosevelt had a part in both stories, the two stories are not necessarily related. Circumstantial coincidences suggest a link that is actually more literary than historical/sociological.
None of this is meant to say any of the three subjects are in any way unworthy of scholarship. In fact, each are immensely worthy. Point one is worth including in a book about either the Progressive era or the evolution of American cities between 1820 and 1919. Point two is clearly an important chapter in any ambitious biography of William Jennings Bryan. The same goes with point three, with regard to Theodore Roosevelt. The 1896 election is itself worthy of study; the events in Hot Time would necessarily form a key pivot in any such study.
The problem is that Mr. Kohn's book lacks any of the ambition needed to contextualize any of its three subjects. While Hot Time is promoted as - and probably intended to be - a beach/airport read, it lacks the cadence of the mass market non-fiction epitomized by Simon Winchester or Jon Krakauer. At 250 pages and rife with sensational detail, Hot Time should go down smoothly and easily. Instead, reading the book is a bit of a chore.
All this considered, I still might be inclined to rate Hot Time in the Old Town at a solid - if average - three stars, if the bizarre postscript were not tacked on at the very end of the book (after two successive chapters titled "Conclusion" and "Epilogue"). Kohn's final words suggest his improbable thesis was actually to inspire readers to think more about quality of life issues and emergency planning in a world that is still following a trend of urbanization. If so, that is not what I got from it.
Kohn may also be implying that climate change is the new tenement housing in the continuum of pestilence the urban poor are forced to contend with. Fine. But the sum of all of these parts is not a tidy narrative that details a "heat wave" and "the making of Theodore Roosevelt." And that is the principal problem with Hot Time.
There was a short circuit somewhere in the chain connecting author and publisher. The manuscript should have been sent back. If Hot Time was a plate of food, it never would have left a respectable kitchen.
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