A Prayer for the City

Buzz Bissinger

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Nominee:Helen Bernstein Book Award -Excellence in Journalism (1999)

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. 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.

Book Details

Publisher: Vintage
Publish Date: Dec 29th, 1998
Pages: 448
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.00in - 5.19in - 0.99in - 0.87lb
EAN: 9780679744948
Categories: • United States - State & Local - General• Sociology - Urban• American Government - General

About the Author

Buzz Bissinger is the author of A Prayer for the City, the New York Times bestseller Three Nights in August, and Friday Night Lights, which has sold almost two million copies to date and spawned a film and a TV series. He is a contributing writer for Vanity Fair.

Praise for this book

Praise for Buzz Bissinger's A Prayer for the City

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
Finalist for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award

"An extraordinary book, an insider's account of the daily workings of a big-city administration." --The New York Review of Books

"A fascinating, humane portrait of the ills of urban America." --The New Yorker

"A full-scale portrait of a struggling American metropolis that brings to mind such classics of urban reportage and analysis as J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground and Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land." --The New York Times Book Review

"Brilliant and compelling. A Prayer for the City movingly captures the poignancy--the hope and heartbreak--of urban government in America." --Robert A. Caro

"There has never been a better portrait of how a big city functions and how one mayor operates to push, pull, and prod the cement of bureaucracy as well as the souls of individual citizens toward a better place. This is actually more of a novel than it is current history, filled with insight and anecdotes that make you feel good about politics and people, too." --The Boston Globe

"Superb. . . . Bissinger's writing, sparse and urgent, always shines." --The Miami Herald