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The Great Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of the City of New York |
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Home: You are here: Books : The Great Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of the City of New York |
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The Great Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of the City of New York  Rating: Rating:  - Two promises kept The title of Alyn Brodsky's history, "The Great Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of the City of New York" suggests that his book will discuss two things: Mayor LaGuardia and how he shaped New York City. He delivers on both promises and then some. (Although I might argue that a more precise subtitle would be "...the Making of the Modern City of New York.") This is a research-filled tome, but by no means dry. LaGuardia was too feisty a character to be made to look bland--and Brodsky lets LaGuardia exhibit all his unbridled emotions. But he doesn't let the reader forget the mind--the brilliance--behind the bellowings, poundings, and outrages. All of LaGuardia's ingenius (and some of his few not-so-ingenius) proposals and enactments are presented here--not just during his terms as mayor of the City of New York, but as a lawyer, congressman, and commander of America's brand new air force. But this book is not an appeal for LaGuardia's sainthood. There was too much sulking, too much mean-spiritednes, too much selfishness to even think of such a canonization. What is testimony to Fiorello's greatness is that his greatness is still remembered to this day, in spite of the warts and all. So much for fulfilling the first promise. In responding to the second promise, Brodsky clearly presents the City of New York before LaGuardia's career and the City after LaGuardia's career. The corruption, mismanagement, Tammany-domination of the City during the first three decades of the 20th Century are extensively rendered. And although these three things certainly did not go away after LaGuardia's leadership, they certainly were corrected to an enormous degree. And, who knows, if he had had his way, maybe they might have been eliminated all together. Style-wise, the book is quite readable. I didn't fret over the occasional syntactical confusions but some of the metaphors and similes were jaw-droppingly bad. But I'm picking at stupid things here. "The Great Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of the City of New York" is a book as great as the mayor it wants us to remember. Rating:  - An Above Average BiographyAlyn Brodsky's "The Great Mayor" seems ambivalent about the life and career of Fiorello La Guardia. Brodsky at times leans too favorably upon the often irratic behavior of the Little Flower in the consular service, in Congress, and in City Hall. Nevertheless, his portrayal of Fiorello's decline both politically and personally is quite frank and adds dimension to this well-researched and well-documented work. A real treat that Brodsky's book offers is a perceptive political history of the City of New York and its characters. Tammany Hall receives a drubbing, as does Robert Moses, the venerated creator of the New York parks system. Unfortunately, the book is poorly edited and suffers from a generous sprinkling of obvious syntax errors. A truly magnificent biography would not have seen such missteps. In the end, "The Great Mayor" remains a noteworthy contribution to the body of works about New York's history. It deserves to be read - and will be read moderately quickly - by fans of the Big Apple. Rating: - Thorough and entertainingI have never been to New York and confess that I don't know as much as I should about the history of that great city. I was very pleased to find that Alyn Brodsky's book was not only educational but entertaining. I admit there were some parts that probably would appeal more to scholars and historians than to an average reader, but overall the book was fascinating. Mr. Brodsky did an excellent job presenting not only the huge number of facts and figures, but also the human, personal sides of the mayor and his people. Rating: - Guy from Katonah is a moronThat guy from Katonah must be a moron. Maybe he can't read at all. The book is an excellent, well-researched biography and an easy read. Brodsky does a wonderful job of bringing to life a man who was a real character and who defined NYC as we know it. He stands out all the more as a man of principle when compared to the kind of creeps we see today in politics. Admittedly FLG seemed to change into a bit of a megalomaniac toward the end of his career, but he still accomplished a great deal both for NYC and for the people of the US, whom he saw as his constituency. This is a first-class book. I highly recommend it. The Great Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of the City of New York 1 2
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