The Secrets of the Hopewell Box: Stolen Elections Southern Politics and a City's Coming of Age

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"A sometimes eye-goggling history of political corruption in one corner of the postwar South. . . . Squires grandfather was a sheriffs deputy who carried a gun and a clenched fist a man . . . who was also Squires relates one of the muscle men behind a vicious cabal of power brokers headed by one Boss Crump. . . . That machine involved for a time much of Nashvilles leading citizenry. It engineered elections stole votes organized lynch mobs ran an illegal gambling empire and in the 1950s when it appeared that the traditional Democratic Party was going soft on civil rights brokered the advent of Republicanism in one corner of the South." Kirkus Reviews "His richly textured narrative charts the Nashville machines rupture with the states top political boss Edward Crump of Memphis and traces the sweeping reforms that shattered rural white control of the state legislature. Squires dramatically reenacts the downfall of Nashville lawyer Tommy Osborn convicted of jury tampering in 1964 after defending Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. He follows Nashvilles transformation into a crucible of the civil rights movement in this stirring chronicle of the Souths coming-of-age." Publishers Weekly