A Prayer for the City

We’ve had our share of “season with the team” books about basketball, baseball, and football, so why not a book about an event of political importance: an insider’s account of an entire term of a big city mayor? And it might as well be about one of America’s best, most interesting mayors, Philadelphia’s Ed Rendell. Buzz Bissinger follows Rendell, his chief of staff, and four other Philadelphians through four years of his sincere, flamboyant struggle against Philadelphia’s crushing poverty–four years of dealing with the staff, the press, the constituents, and the feds. It doesn’t end with the eradication of the city’s many social ills, but it does end with a second term, and with hope.