The Stephen B. Luce Library at SUNY Maritime College, Bronx, NY, will host a guest lecture entitled  &#8220Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York.&#8221 Author and historian Richard Zacks will tells the story of Roosevelt’s two-year campaign as a reformist New York City Police Commissioner on Thursday, September 18th at 1:30 pm.

Zacks grew up in New York City, wandering to Times Square when it was still evil. His mother sought to refine his manners with white-glove dance lessons at the Pierre Hotel but that effort failed miserably. As a teenager, he gambled on the horses, played blackjack in illegal Manhattan card parlors and bought his first drink at age fifteen at the Plaza Hotel.

Zacks also attended elite schools such as Horace Mann (’73), University of Michigan (’79) and Columbia Journalism School (’81). He majored in Classical Greek and studied Arabic, Italian and French. Zacks spent the decade of the 1980s as a journalist, writing a widely syndicated newspaper column, as well as freelance pieces for the likes of The Atlantic, Sports Illustrated. His book Pirate Hunter has sold more than 175,000 copies and TIME magazine chose it among the five best non-fiction books of the year.