cover image Daley: Power and Presidential Politics

Daley: Power and Presidential Politics

F. Richard Ciccone. McGraw-Hill/Contemporary, $24.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8092-3151-5

An associate editor of the Chicago Tribune, Ciccone, who has covered local politics for 35 years, has an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject and a familiarity with backroom wheeling and dealing, the ways in which power is grabbed and held. An exemplar of that style of politics, as he shows here, was Richard J. Daley, mayor of the Windy City from 1955 until his death in 1976. He served a long apprenticeship as state representative, state senator, deputy controller, revenue director, county clerk, committeeman and party chairman and was the last of the big-city Democratic bosses. Ciccone presents the twists and turns of the tortuous path by which Daley became the king of his city and a major player in national politics. And he offers some credible speculations: Illinois Democrats backed idealistic Adlai Stevenson for president in 1952 because they wanted him out of the gubernatorial mansion; the 1960 presidential race in the key state of Illinois was decided because the upstate Democrats cheated more effectively than did the downstate Republicans. (Oct.)