Cold New World: Growing up in a Harder Country
Author: William Finnegan
New Yorker writer William Finnegan spent time with families in four communities across America and became an intimate observer of the lives he reveals in these beautifully rendered portraits: a fifteen-year-old drug dealer in blighted New Haven, Connecticut; a sleepy Texas town transformed by crack; Mexican American teenagers in Washington State, unable to relate to their immigrant parents and trying to find an identity in gangs; jobless young white supremacists in a downwardly mobile L.A. suburb. Important, powerful, and compassionate, Cold New World gives us an unforgettable look into a present that presages our future.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction of 1998 selection
One of the Voice Literary Supplement's Twenty-five Favorite Books of 1998
What People Are Saying
Nicholas Lemann
Cold New World is a book about an important, grievously underreported (until now) social phenomenon, the shutting out of a whole generation of young Americans from opportunity.
New interesting book: Al Dente or Little Cafe Cakes
American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation
Author: Adam Cohen
"This is Chicago, this is America." With those words, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley famously defended his brutal crackdown on protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention. Profoundly divided racially, economically and socially, Chicago was indeed a microcosm of America, and for more than two decades Daley ruled it with an iron fist. The last of the big city bosses, Daley ran an unbeatable political machine that controlled over one million votes. From 1955 until his death in 1976, every decision of any importance -- from distributing patronage jobs to picking Congressional candidates -- went through his office. He was a major player in national politics as well: Kennedy and Johnson owed their presidencies to his control of the Illinois vote, and he made sure they never forgot it. In a city legendary for its corruption and backroom politics, Daley's power was unrivaled.
Daley transformed Chicago -- then a dying city -- into a modern metropolis of skyscrapers, freeways and a thriving downtown. But he also made Chicago America's most segregated city. A man of profound prejudices and a deep authoritarian streak , he constructed the nation's largest and worst ghettoes, sidestepped national civil rights laws, and successfully thwarted Martin Luther King's campaign to desegregate Northern cities.
A quarter-century after his death, Daley's outsize presence continues to influence American urban life, and a reassessment of his career is long overdue. Now, veteran journalists Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor present the definitive biography of Richard J. Daley, drawn from newly uncovered material and dozens of interviews with his contemporaries. In today's era of poll-tested, polished politicians, Daley's rough-and-tumble story is remarkable. From the working-class Irish neighborhood of his childhood, to his steady rise through Chicago's corrupt political hierarchy, to his role as national powerbroker, American Pharaoh is a riveting account of the life and times of one of the most important figures in twentieth-century domestic politics. In the tradition of Robert Caro's classic The Power Broker, this is a compelling life story of a towering individual whose complex legacy is still with us today.
Scott Turow
American Pharaoh is a unique gem. It is an enthralling narrative, a true page-turner, and also a needed work of history. It is the first serious biography of Richard J. Daley, the enormously complicated man who ruled Chicago for decades, and who, no matter how viewed, indelibly shaped not only one city, but the American political scene and national urban life." (—Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent)
Douglas Brinkley
I have read a lot of biographies, but none more compelling than Cohen and Taylor's brilliant portrait of Mayor Richard J. Daley. American Pharaoh is a tour de force." (—William Julius Wilson, author of When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor)
Washington Monthly
...fast-paced, comprehensive, and written well enough to evoke the sights and sounds of a great city in turbulent times.
Publishers Weekly
Like all good biographies, this first full account of the life of Richard Daley does more than tell the story of an individual. In the course of telling Daley's tale--from his birth (in 1902) to his death (in 1976)--journalists Cohen and Taylor also chronicle the history of 20th-century Chicago. They capture the grittiness of Daley's boyhood--the day-to-day of life near the stockyards, the importance of ethnicity in local neighborhoods and the city's seemingly paradoxical combination of parochialism and diversity, dynamic growth and resistance to change. Initiated into machine politics as a young man, Daley quickly embraced the machine's values of order, allegiance, authority and, above all, the pursuit of power. Later, he ran the city in accordance with these values; the authors explain that he always assessed his options in terms of what would both enhance his power and encourage Chicagoans to stay in their proper place. Cohen (a senior writer at Time) and Taylor (literary editor and Sunday magazine editor of the Chicago Tribune) use the most famous crisis during his tenure, the 1968 Democratic convention, to illustrate how the mayor's rigid values dictated his actions--but more importantly, they say, his myopic passion for order worked together with his deep racism to shape modern Chicago. And, they argue, his legacy is a cultural legacy--through him, early 20th-century ethnic narrow-mindedness shaped everything from the character of Chicago politics to its landscape. (Constructed during his tenure, Chicago's freeways and housing projects keep everyone, especially blacks, in their places.) Penetrating, nonsensationalistic and exhaustive, this is an impressive and important biography. 16 pages b&w illus. not seen by PW. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
The Washington Monthly - Nolan
Cohen and Taylor are fastidiously fair to the famous mayor and do not take sides...Like their subject, they take Chicago very seriously.
The New York Times Book Review - Alan Ehrenhalt
A splendid, serious treatment of Daley's life, the first full-length biography of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters of modern American political history . . .
The New York Observer - Ward Just
This marvelous book—it is one of the very best narratives of American politics that I have read—is a meticulous account of the rise and long twilight of the most powerful city boss of recent history...
Business Week - Robert Royalty
...the definitive biography...Cogen and Taylor don't just look under the hood of America's last great political machine, they take the engine apart and examine every corroded nut and bolt...a compelling narrative.
Kirkus Reviews
A monumental biography of Chicago's six-term mayor that elevates the coarse and cunning political boss to the status of an American icon. It's hard to argue with the assertion of journalists Cohen (Time) and Taylor (Chicago Tribune) that Daley was the biggest political boss of the last century. The only child of a working-class, Irish-Catholic family, Daley started out as a laborer in the city's infamous stockyards and, despite the fancy suits and limousines he later indulged as prerogatives of power, always claimed to be just another hard-working man who took care of the people who voted for him. In the city's working-class Bridgeport neighborhood, the young Daley did the boring detail work that local Democratic precinct captains didn't like, got out the vote, kicked back to those who favored him, and never forgot a face. More a plodder than a charismatic leader, Daley worked his way through law school, remained faithful to his wife, refrained from smoking or drinking, and never stole from the public trough—though he had no problems lying to the press and collecting two salaries (beginning in 1955) as both mayor and Democratic Party chairman. A stickler for clean streets, he surrounded himself with glad-handers, thugs, bureaucratic hacks, and ward heelers who doled out patronage jobs, exploited racist fears, and salted election returns. The darling of the national Democratic Party after Illinois provided the crucial votes that put Kennedy in the White House in 1960, Daley let the city's business elite launch urban-renewal schemes that improved the skyline while reinforcing racial and economical segregation. He became a national embarrassment when journalistswerebeaten by police during the 1968 Democratic convention, but (despite numerous scandals) he remained in control of the city up to the moment he died in 1976. A breathlessly engrossing history of a classic urban political machine and the powerbroker who ran it his way. (16 pages b&w illustrations, not seen)
What People Are Saying
Scott Turow
American Pharaoh is a unique gem. It is an enthralling narrative, a true page—turner, and also a needed work of history. It is the first serious biography of Richard J. Daley, the enormously complicated man who ruled Chicago for decades, and who, no matter how viewed, indelibly shaped not only one city, but the American political scene and national urban life.
—(Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent)
Douglas Brinkley
American Pharaoh is a grand, sweeping profile of Chicago's Richard J. Daley, perhaps the most powerful and irascible mayor in American history. This is political biography at its absolute finest: sprightly prose, dramatic flair, definitive insights, careful research, colorful anecdotes, and a balanced interpretation. Daley leaps off these pages as if he were still alive.
—(Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Eisenhower Center and Professor of History, University of New Orleans)
Studs Terkel
This is a myth—shattering portrait of Mayor Daley the elder. In its revelatory detail, it offers us a canny politician, not especially original or colorful, whose staying power enabled him to outlast all competition. It is an eye opening work that enthralls the reader from page one.
—(Studs Terkel, author of Working and My American Century)
Alex Kotlowitz
American Pharaoh is biography at its absolute best. In the spirit of Robert Caro's The Power Broker, this is a story of more than just a man. It is a tale of a tumultuous time, of the corrupt authority of power, and of the strength and frailties of our democracy. Best of all, Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, who have done an extraordinary job of reporting, know how to spin a good yarn. I read this book on airplanes. I read it late at night. I read it when I should have been working. In short, it held me spellbound.
—(Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River)
