Talk:Rufus Elefante

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Reliable sources[edit]

I don't think "Guts and glory, tragedy and triumph : the Rufus P. Elefante story" by Nancy Kobryn is a reliable source. Steffen Publishing was a print shop near Utica, not an actual publishing house. I'd say it was being used as a vanity press here. The quality of the writing in the book is terrible, suggesting it was never really edited by anyone. It also doesn't seem to exist in any libraries outside the Utica area: my guess is that she had a dozen or so copies published for local interest.

I'm also not sure it supports the text it's used as a reference for. The book is a fairly glowing biography of Elefante, and I don't think it would describe him as a boss of a political machine.

About 9 results come up in The Wikipedia Library, and there's hits on Gbooks too. Given Elefante's influence in the area I'd prefer sources with a little distance. I'll work on incorporating better sources if nobody else gets to it before me. Apocheir (talk) 00:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]