As two-term, two-fisted District Attorney of the world's mightiest metropolis during that boisterous period known as the ""turn of the century"", Travers Jerome stood in the glare of an overlapping spotlight in his ""effort to make municipal politics respectable and respectable people more political."" O'Connor's study of Jerome is far more than just the biography of one man, intrepid and indomitable as that man may have been; it is a cogent and effective portrait of an epoch the likes of which may never be seen again.