A Prayer for the City - Hardcover

Buzz Bissinger; H. G. Bissinger

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067942198X ISBN 13: 9780679421986

Publisher: Random House, 1997

Synopsis

In 1990, Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights became an acclaimed bestseller and national sensation, igniting immediate debate about the role of high school football in small-town Texas.  Now, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist does for big cities what he did for small towns in this epic story of one remarkable politician's efforts to save a dying American City.
Mayor Edward Rendell will do almost anything for Philadelphia.  He will clean the bathrooms in City Hall, endure a joint appearance with Mickey Mouse, and personally lobby President Clinton to keep jobs in the city.  He is that rare politician who is larger than life in his ambitions, compassion, and flaws--a man wise enough to see the comic absurdity of his job, yet crazy enough to think he can actually revive his declining city.
To succeed, Rendell must negotiate a tough new contract with city workers who are threatening to strike and wreak havoc on the city.  He must allay African-American leaders engaged in a zero-sum game of racial politics.  He must combat the loss of tens of thousands of jobs that have brought the Workshop of the World to its knees.
As Rendell and his brilliant chief of staff, David Cohen fight these political battles, four citizens of Philadelphia engage in their own personal struggles, each one connected to events at City Hall:
Jim Mangan is a thirty-seven-year-old welder with a wife and six children.  Unless the mayor can achieve a miracle, he and thousands of others will lose their jobs at the city's historic Naval Shipyard.
Linda Morrison is a city-employed policy analyst who believes urban life can improve if the mayor embraces unprecedented change.  But will Rendell have the courage?  Will she be able to sustain her love for the city, or will the pressures of crime and taxes drive her away?
Mike McGovern is a prosecutor whose anger at the urban violence of the city fuels his drive for justice.  As he questions the personal cost of what he does, he faces one of his toughest trials, seeking life imprisonment for a teenager charged with murder.
Fifi Mazzccua is an elderly woman from the inner city raising four great-grandchildren while faithfully visiting her son in prison and hoping she'll live to see the day when he is freed.
At turns heart-wrenching and hilarious, A Prayer for the City dramatically illustrates high-pressure politics and the threat of economic decline facing so many cities.  No author has ever written with such humanity and insight about a politician in power and the way cities really work.

About this title

Review:

We've had our share of "season with the team" books about basketball, baseball, and football, so why not a book about an event of political importance: an insider's account of an entire term of a big city mayor? And it might as well be about one of America's best, most interesting mayors, Philadelphia's Ed Rendell. Buzz Bissinger follows Rendell, his chief of staff, and four other Philadelphians through four years of his sincere, flamboyant struggle against Philadelphia's crushing poverty--four years of dealing with the staff, the press, the constituents, and the feds. It doesn't end with the eradication of the city's many social ills, but it does end with a second term, and with hope.

From the Back Cover:

"Buzz Bissinger's first book, Friday Night Lights, was an instant classic. He has followed up that remarkable debut with a far more ambitious project, a living portrait not just of a talented mayor, but of his bitterly divided city. Bissinger's Philadelphia could be any major city in America, and this penetrating, seductively readable book belongs with the two exceptional books he sought to emulate, Anthony Lake's Common Ground and Robert A. Caro's The Pawn Broker." --David Halberstam, author of The Fifties

"Brilliant and compelling, reported with great integrity, A Prayer for the City movingly captures the poignancy--the hope and heartbreak--of urban government in America, and of a heroic mayor's attempt to turn the tide. It takes place immediately on the very short shelf of truly major works about American cities." --Robert A. Caro, author of The Power Broker

"The readers of this remarkable and well-written account of urban life in America will appreciate that even the most dedicated and remarkable municipal leadership cannot offset the unrelenting social forces that threaten the future of American cities. This book is required reading for those who want a better understanding of how and why our cities are in decline." --William Julius Wilson, author of When Work Disappears

"Buzz Bissinger gives us a heartbreaking inside view of how all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put a city together again after it has been economically uncreative for more than half a century and maltreated by banks; public housers; local, state, and federal politicians; and its own people." --Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 067942198X
• ISBN 13: 9780679421986
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 408