The sordid secrets of the cities

Political machine, corruption and violence.

ImageJ. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I. director, sits at a table talking into several microphones in 1953. The first is that many American subscribers wanted to know how they could watch the final season of "Babylon Berlin." If that's you, then I'm sorry: Netflix hasn't released it in the US yet (it's already available online where I live), but I understand the more dedicated among you can order Online DVD.

The second theme is that many of you reached out after my column on Brazil last week to highlight the history of similar links between politicians and violent groups in the United States and other wealthy countries.< /p>

I totally agree and hope to write more to this topic soon. But for now, as I often do, I've been doing some broader reading to try and get some relevant history knowledge.

For some learn more about J Edgar Hoover, and in particular his lack of noticeable interest in prosecuting the Mafia and other organized crime syndicates - even as their power grew in American cities and they meddled with local governments, the police, unions and other institutions - until the Apalachin reunion in the late 1950s forced his hand, I picked up "G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Achievement of the Century American,” by Beverly Gage. A friend recommended it to me as "the biography of J. Edgar Hoover but also the biography of the first 70 years of 20th century America".

The essence of this kind of violent politics is that it happens at the local level, so I've also read about specific cities, and how their particular flavors of machine politics have sometimes opened space for crime and corruption is on the rise...