Boss

By Mike Royko,

Book cover of Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

Book description

"The best book ever written about an American city, by the best journalist of his time."- Jimmy Breslin

New edition of the classic story of the late Richard J. Daley, politician and self-promoter extraordinaire, from his inauspicious youth on Chicago's South Side through his rapid climb to the seat of…

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Why read it?

3 authors picked Boss as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

My wife and I lived in Chicago this summer, and I wanted to educate myself about its past. You can't say you truly know about Chicago if you don't know a thing or two about one of its most powerful and memorable mayors, Richard J. Daley. You can't get a better guide than Mike Royko to tell that fascinating story.

Chicago is where I grew up watching the fascinating interplay between the so-called forces of law and order battle the criminal element. It wasn’t much of a battle unless the law-and-order guys and the crooks found themselves reaching for the same loot. Mike Royko’s book describes very well the interplay. On a personal note, I once worked for one of the Illinois governors who ran as a reform candidate. He ended up going to jail on a fraud scheme.

From Ray's list on wise guys you’ll love.

There’s nothing about the blues or indeed any music at all in this. Mike Royko might well have been a blues fan, but he was primarily one of the best political columnists of the era, working for Chicago’s Daily News, Sun-Times, and Tribune from the Sixties through to the Nineties, and winning a Pulitzer Prize. His forensic account of the corrupt, scandal-prone but invincible party machine run by Mayor Daley, who had just been re-elected for his fifth term in office when the book came out in 1971, is merciless, shocking, and often hilarious. To a young outsider like…

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Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

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