American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for Chicago and the Nation

A great addition to Mike Royko's "Boss". Lots of detail about Chicago "machine" politics and the rise of Richard J.Daley from Precinct Captain to Mayor. It helps if you're a Chicagoin and have some local knowledge about the city and its neighborhoods. (The author provides enough background if you're not.) I'm a Chicago reader.

A masterpiece that not only serves as a biography of Richard Daley, but shows us how the City of Chicago came to be what it is today. There have been some serious power brokers that have served as Mayors in America, but Richard Daley, in terms of acquiring and holding power, must rank at the top of that group. The book is detailed, but for those looking to see how municipal government works this might not be the book for you. In Chicago if Daley wanted it done it was done. Not a lot of grass roots organizing involved in getting decisions made and executed. The book properly focuses on how Daley's perch as Chair of the Cook County Democratic machine was just as valuable to him, in many respects, as the Mayors job, allowing him to exert control not only in Chicago, but across the entire State of Illinois. The Democratic Convention of 1968 is covered very well, and is a history that many of us are familiar with. What I learned beyond my prior understanding was how official and conscious government acts by Daley contributed to the segregated housing landscape that existed in Chicago at that time. He molded the City, and his vision did not include integration of housing. Daley, due to these policies, had to try to face down Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who came to Chicago to bring the civil rights movement to the urban north. Daley did not choose to overtly resist, but chose tactics that obfuscated his goals, promised progress, but delivered little.A fascinating book that should be read by all those interested in the acquiring and holding of power. Daley, from that perspective and on a smaller scale, rivaled LBJ as a power politician. The book honestly depicts some of the awful things he did, but does its best to give Daley some credit where it might have been due. Having just read the Tom Menino book I think it could be fairly said that Daley predated Menino in putting forward malapropisms. A couple of great ones: "Gentlemen, get this thing straight once and for all. The policeman isn't there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder.""Today the real problem is the future."This book is highly recommended.

Recently I read almost all of the Daley biography/political books, and this is the longest and most detailed. It is the best written, and has a lot of details. It makes the Daley history more of a story. It has a slight liberal slant, and goes through the usual Daley corruption deals. However they stop short of completely talking about how the Daley machine ruined the black family. They do discuss in great detail how Daley confined blacks, who were brought up from the South to work, into segregated ghettos and high rise tenements. then Daley II did the same with mexicans, to populate the city. They are now confined in the 4th congressional district. So the most brutal and anti black attitude of Daley is not disussed as frankly as I would like to see, since blacks suffered so much in the city. In 2000 of the ten poorest Census tracts in the country, nine are found in the South side black belt, and people there are now worse off than they were as sharecroppers in the south. Indeed, many blacks are moving back South, after decades of being forced into crime and single motherhood. But this is a pretty thorough book and it borrows from many others, it is well researched.

This is an uneven book. In the aggregate - it gives a great feel for the history of machine politics in Chicago, the roots and rise of Mayor Daley, the careful racial segregation of public housing, etc etc. I was looking for a view into Chicago history and I got an excellent one. I would say the book is way too detailed in many parts and found myself increasingly starting to surf through the book in search of more interesting sections. The sections on the 1960s, the role of the police, the 1968 convention - those are all WOW sections. But other parts of the book were excessively detailed and dry. You have to want to know a lot about Daley and Chicago political history to make it through this. In my case I actually did, but probably not for everyone.

There is no doubt that a comprehensive biography of Richard J. Daley and the decades-long effects of his policies is a necessary addition to American history. Unfortunately, "American Pharaoh" is not it. It is apparent throughout the book that the authors are most interested in Daley's relationship with the African-American community in Chicago. The sections that described this relationship are far and away the best portions of the book; this topic should have been the focus of the entire book. Instead, the authors attempt to squeeze Daley's entire career into this volume--and they seem unprepared for this endeavor. Their research is thin, mostly comprising newspaper articles, old Daley biographies, and a handful of interviews. The authors apparently did not have access to many of the people who worked intimately with Daley throughout the years, and the book suffers immensely because of this. Without inside access, countless questions go unanswered. The reader gets a a lot of "what" happened and very little "how" it happened; that is, the authors rarely illuminate the complex decision-making behind the mayor's decisions. It is hard to appreciate "American Pharaoh" after reading the political biographies by Robert Caro, which painstakingly detail the step-by-step choices and infighting that produces policy."American Pharaoh" presents us with a surface view of Daley. Aside from the sections on Daley's interactions with Martin Luther King, Jr. and other African-American community leaders, this book is soft-focused and largely disappointing. A closer look at Daley is still necessary.

The book is awesome and the book came in excellent condition!

The book describes in an easy to read style how powerful politicians could be. Very clearly written but it is too long.

Wonderful history.