The Book Prize Index

The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley, 1874-1958

Jack Beatty

Twice-jailed scoundrel and the people's champion, builder of hospitals and schools and shameless grafter, compelling orator and master of political farce, James Michael Curley was the stuff of legend long before his life became fiction in Edwin O'Connor's classic novel The Last Hurrah. As mayor of Boston, as congressman, as governor of Massachusetts, Curley rose from the Irish slums in a career extending from the Progressive Era of Teddy Roosevelt to the ascendancy of JFK. Beatty's spellbinding story of this remarkable man-and of his city, his people, and his times-is biography at its best.

BiographyBiography · medium confidenceBiography81 signalsLlm Classifier: Biography -> BiographyGoogle Books: Biography & Autobiography -> Memoir & AutobiographyGoogle Books: Biography & Autobiography -> BiographyLiterary Biography

Award History

0 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
National Book Critics Circle Award for BiographyMajor1992FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • James Michael Curley92%

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Boston72%
    • Massachusetts55%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 86%.