Review by R. Alan Clanton
Thursday Review Editor
Cannato has written an essential and exhaustive study of one of the most critical periods of crisis for New York City, a town once regarded as the world’s greatest metropolis, but which by the middle of the 1960s had fallen into a downward spiral of crime, poverty, inefficiency, corruption and bankruptcy. Liberal Republican mayor John Lindsay seemed, for a brief period, to be the salvation of the great city built by urban titans like Robert Moses, Robert Wagner and Fiorella LaGuardia. Once a mayor so popular that his path to the White House seemed secure, and even inevitable, Lindsay struggled to overcome New York’s tapestry of complex problems—a dizzying host of deficiencies so intractable that they seemed to defy reform or renewal. Charismatic, patrician and graceful, Lindsay ultimately failed to bring about the renewal and rebirth he sought, and his frustrations would effectively end his political career by the middle 1970s. Well researched and thoroughly documented, this book is a valuable piece of contemporary history. (Basic Books; New York)
