Download First Son: The Biography of Richard M. Daley AudioBook Free
"Mayor Richard M. Daley fallen the bomb at a tedious news seminar at City Hall on Wednesday. Without prelude or fanfare, Mr. Daley declared that he would not seek re-election when his term expires next yr. 'Simply put, it's time,' he said." NY Times, September 7, 2010 With those four words, a time concluded. After twenty-two years, the longest-serving & most powerful mayor in the annals of Chicago - and, probably, America-stepped down, abandoning a city that was utterly transformed, and a complicated legacy we are only beginning to examine. In First Boy, Keith Koeneman chronicles the sometimes Shakespearean, sometimes Machiavellian life of the American political tale. Making deft use of unprecedented access to key players in the Daley administration, as well as Chicago's business and ethnical leaders, Koeneman pulls on several hundred interviews to inform an up-close, insider report of politics triumph and personal progression. With Koeneman as our guide, we follow young Daley from his origins as an average Bridgeport kid thought to lack his father's skill and charisma to his improbable change into an iron-fisted head. Daley not only escaped the giant darkness of his father but also altered Chicago from a gritty, post-industrial Midwestern capital into a lovely, superior global city more popular as a model for impressive metropolises across the world. However in spite of his many achievements, Richard M. Daley's record is far from flawless. First Boy places the dramatic improvement of certain parts of the city resistant to the persistent realities of offense, financial stress, faltering public property, and dysfunctional academic institutions. And it discloses that while in lots of ways Daley broke with the machine politics of his father, he persisted to reward loyalty with favors, use the resources of city federal to overwhelm competitors, and tolerate politics corruption. A nuanced portrait of a complicated man, First Boy shows Daley to be very sensitive yet rough, impatient yet persistent, a street-smart fighter and detail-driven coverage expert who not only ran Chicago, but was Chicago. The book is printed by School of Chicago Press.
