Howe & Hummel

by Richard H. Rovere

This is a fun book and everyone should get it. It’s about two of the most shyster lawyers you can imagine in New York in the second half of the 19th century. Howe was an English guy on the run for murder and he pitched up in New York and started a law firm on Center Street in downtown Manhattan. He fell in with the much smarter but equally impecunious Hummel, a ratbag from the Lower East Side. There is something of Howe and Hummel in every lawyer.