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By Buzz Bissinger
Random House, $25.95
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Review by Eric Pilsk
The plight of the old urban centers like Philadelphia has fallen off the political radar screen as the middle class has abandoned old cities in favor of new suburbs and exurbs. If the inner city makes the nightly news at all, it is only to chronicle the failures of urban policy -- riots, drugs, violence and financial disaster.
Buzz Bissinger, a journalist, sets out to fill this gap by presenting a story of urban hope through a first-hand account of the efforts of Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell to rescue Philadelphia from bankruptcy and social collapse. Bissinger was given a front-row seat in Rendell's first administration -- literally. Allowed to sit in the Mayor's office and accompany the Mayor everywhere, Bissinger was often mistaken for a mayoral aide. He was granted similar access to the Mayor's remarkable Chief of Staff -- the brilliant young attorney, David Cohen, who gave up a partnership in the city's most prestigious law firm to work for the Mayor.
The result is an unvarnished account of Mayor Rendell's efforts to rescue and revive Philadelphia. At the center of the story are the big stories of balancing the city budget, facing down the city's unions that had come to control the City's bureaucracy and preventing the disappearance of thousands of high-wage jobs as the Federal government closed the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
But Bissinger also tells the smaller stories of how the Mayor walked the tightrope of identity politics in a racially divided city, played the press and fended off personal scandals. All these stories are told with all the skill of a first-rate journalist, succinctly blending historical background with first-person accounts of events as they happened to deliver a compelling story. Although Bissinger's sympathies clearly are with the Mayor, he does not shy from depicting the Mayor's failures and personal shortcomings. The result is an accurate story that also rings true.
Eric Pilsk is an attorney in Washington, D.C.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.