Rudy Guliani's flinty response to the 9/11 attacks has made him a national hero and has done wonderful things for his future prospects in American politics. But the outpouring of praise for his performance has obscured uncomfortable facts about Guliani. This book collects the original essays and reports from some of New York's most perceptive authors on Guliani's two terms as mayor. Few of the writers have any illusions about his turbulent reign and offer an informative and entertaining corrective to today's simplistic celebration of America's Mayor.
In 2002 the No Child Left Behind Act rocked America's schools with new initiatives for results-based accountability. But years before NCLB was signed, a new movement was already under way by mayors to take control of city schools from school boards and integrate the management of public education with the overall governing of the city. The Education Mayor is a critical look at mayoral control of urban school districts, beginning with Boston's schools in 1992 and examining more than 100 school districts in 40 states. The authors seek to answer four central questions: * What does school governance look like under mayoral leadership? * How does mayoral control affect school and student performance? * What are the key factors for success or failure of integrated governance? * How does mayoral control effect practical changes in schools and classrooms? The results of their examination indicate that, although mayoral control of schools may not be appropriate for every district, it can successfully emphasize accountability across the education system, providing more leverage for each school district to strengthen its educational infrastructure and improve student performance. Based on extensive quantitative data as well as case studies, this analytical study provides a balanced look at America's education reform. As the first multidistrict empirical examination and most comprehensive overall evaluation of mayoral school reform, The Education Mayor is a must-read for academics, policymakers, educational administrators, and civic and political leaders concerned about public education.
"This book is about Lindsay's dream to reinvent New York. Fully a half century since Lindsay was elected to public office, the aftershocks of his record still reverberate as a government grappling with the consequences of immigration, income inequality, a healthcare crisis, and environmental adversity confronts the legacy of the 1960s. --
They call him "America's Mayor." But to blacks that title sugarcoats Rudy Giuliani's real reputation as one of the most racially divisive leaders in the nation. Peter Noel's book puts Giuliani's often-ignored record of oppressing the "other New York" front and center in the 2008 presidential race. Noel was a witness to "Giuliani time" in New York. As the race beat journalist for The Village Voice, he reported exclusively on the police brutality that rained down on blacks, and the denigration of black leadership by Giuliani. In this collection of his exposés, Noel provides stunning insights into the most notorious events of Giuliani's tenure, including the execution-style killing of Amadou Diallo and the sadistic torture of Abner Louima. Both men-like many black victims of Giuliani's stop-and-frisk policing-were innocent of any wrongdoing. This brutality sparked a new black activist movement. Scores, including Jesse Jackson, were arrested-and Peter Noel was there to cover it. No journalist was more insightful about the rise of Al Sharpton, Khallid Muhammad's "Million Youth March," and Giuliani's demonization of David Dinkins, the city's first black mayor. There are interviews with major political players, inside accounts of the shifting alliances and violent conflicts between ethnic groups, and a stinging critique of the white-dominated media. And then there is Peter Noel's interview with Giuliani, which took the form of a street fight in Harlem. In these eloquent, often searing pieces, written in an outraged and authentic voice, Peter Noel spoke truth to the power of an "Afriphobic" mayor. In this revealing book, he still does.
The fascinating account of Rudy Giuliani’s rise to become Mayor of New York City and his eventful years as “emperor of the city” From longtime New York political journalist Andrew Kirtzman, the definitive biography of “America’s Mayor,” Rudy Giuliani, now a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team. The book begins with Giuliani's resignation as U.S. Attorney in 1989, and covers the time period through the immediate aftermath of September 11th. Deeply researched—relying upon numerous interviews with advisors, aides, and adversaries—Rudy Giuliani presents the ultimate look at the man who transformed New York City. Filled with surprising revelations about the Giuliani years, and insights into the man's character, this is political biography at its finest.
ONCE A MAYOR -- NOW A HERO On September 11, 2001, our nation watched in horror as the United States came under siege. In the aftermath, New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani rose to the forefront as a strong and compassionate leader -- offering candid information, comforting those in pain, and proving himself a man of tremendous dedication to those in his charge. This revealing biography illustrates how his life's work prepared him for this incredible challenge. From his childhood in Brooklyn to his controversial work with the Department of Justice to his eight years as the mayor of one of the most complex cities in the world, Rudolph W. Giuliani -- Time magazine's Person of the Year -- has become one of the most fascinating and exceptional leaders of our time.
The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, also home to the Sioux, the Crows, and the Blackfeet, the first people to encounter the dinosaur fossils exposed by the elements. What did Native Americans make of these stone skeletons, and how did they explain the teeth and claws of gargantuan animals no one had seen alive? Did they speculate about their deaths? Did they collect fossils? Beginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones and uses of fossils for medicine, hunting magic, and spells. Well before Columbus, Native Americans observed the mysterious petrified remains of extinct creatures and sought to understand their transformation to stone. In perceptive creation stories, they visualized the remains of extinct mammoths, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine creatures as Monster Bears, Giant Lizards, Thunder Birds, and Water Monsters. Their insights, some so sophisticated that they anticipate modern scientific theories, were passed down in oral histories over many centuries. Drawing on historical sources, archaeology, traditional accounts, and extensive personal interviews, Adrienne Mayor takes us from Aztec and Inca fossil tales to the traditions of the Iroquois, Navajos, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Pawnees. Fossil Legends of the First Americans represents a major step forward in our understanding of how humans made sense of fossils before evolutionary theory developed.
In 1970, Kenneth Gibson was elected as Newark, New Jersey’s first African-American mayor, a position he held for an impressive sixteen years. Yet even as Gibson served as a trailblazer for black politicians, he presided over a troubled time in the city’s history, as Newark’s industries declined and its crime and unemployment rates soared. This book offers a balanced assessment of Gibson’s leadership and his legacy, from the perspectives of the people most deeply immersed in 1970s and 1980s Newark politics: city employees, politicians, activists, journalists, educators, and even fellow big-city mayors like David Dinkins. The contributors include many of Gibson’s harshest critics, as well as some of his closest supporters, friends, and family members—culminating in an exclusive interview with Gibson himself, reflecting on his time in office. Together, these accounts provide readers with a compelling inside look at a city in crisis, a city that had been rocked by riots three years before Gibson took office and one that Harper’s magazine named “America’s worst city” at the start of his second term. At its heart, it raises a question that is still relevant today: how should we evaluate a leader who faced major structural and economic challenges, but never delivered all the hope and change he promised voters?
'The best American political biography since Obama's Dreams from My Father' Guardian NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A mayor's inspirational story of a Midwest city that has become nothing less than a blueprint for the future of American renewal. Once described by the Washington Post as "the most interesting mayor you've never heard of," Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has now emerged as one of America's most visionary politicians. With soaring prose that celebrates a resurgent American Midwest, Shortest Way Home narrates the heroic transformation of a "dying city" (Newsweek) into nothing less than a shining model of urban reinvention. Elected at twenty-nine as the nation's youngest mayor, Pete Buttigieg immediately recognized that "great cities, and even great nations, are built through attention to the everyday." As Shortest Way Home recalls, the challenges were daunting: whether confronting gun violence, renaming a street in honour of Martin Luther King Jr., or attracting tech companies to a city that had appealed more to junk bond scavengers than serious investors. None of this is underscored more than Buttigieg's audacious campaign to reclaim 1,000 houses, many of them abandoned, in 1,000 days and then, even as a sitting mayor, deploying to serve in Afghanistan as a Navy officer. Yet the most personal challenge still awaited Buttigieg, who came out in a South Bend Tribune editorial, just before being re-elected with 78 percent of the vote, and then finding Chasten Glezman, a middle-school teacher, who would become his partner for life. While Washington reels with scandal, Shortest Way Home, with its graceful, often humorous, language, challenges our perception of the typical American politician. In chronicling two once-unthinkable stories, that of an Afghanistan veteran who came out and found love and acceptance, all while in office, and that of a revitalized Rust Belt city no longer regarded as "flyover country" Buttigieg provides a new vision for America's shortest way home.
