Journal of the Plague Year

The March 10, 2008, disclosure that Governor Eliot Spitzer had patronized prostitutes from the Emperors Club VIP sex ring shocked New Yorkers and his admirers around the world, who had celebrated Spitzer as the "Sheriff of Wall Street" and a likely future U.S. president.

Ironically, one man''s disillusionment with Spitzer had begun to disappear fifteen hours earlier, when Spitzer confessed what the...