"The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition" taps America's most qualified observers to scrupulously assess the city's mayors within the vigorous and tumultuous history of Chicago government. This revised and updated edition features extensive commentary on the enduring mayoral influence of Richard M. Daley.

"In the seventeen years since "The Mayors" was first published," editors Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Holli write in the Preface to this edition, "Chicago politics has become more genteel, more docile, and more predictable. This dampening of the city's once red-hot political coals is due to domination by one man: Mayor Richard M. Daley." Also providing a political roadmap through the complex and fascinating labyrinth of Chicago politics are essays on other recent mayors: Richard J. Daley, Michael A. Bilandic, Jane M. Byrne, and Harold Washington.

Green and Holli's popular study maintains that the key to the mayor's office is power: the power to reward and the power to punish that comes with occupying the fifth floor of city hall in Chicago. Beginning with Joseph Medill, the "Tribune" publisher who guided the city in its rise from the ashes after the Great Fire of 1871, "The Mayors" takes readers through the terms of some of the city's most colorful leaders: from the progressive Carter Harrison II and the radical Edward F. Dunne to the politically reticent Fred A. Busse and the loudmouth Big Bill Thompson. The essays collectively tell a riveting story of structures wherein aggressive power brokers surmount even massive corruption and scandal, and those who fail to seize the office's inherent authority have short, uncomfortable tenures.

In addition to Green and Holli, contributors include David L. Protess, Edward R. Kantowicz, John D. Buenker, Maureen A. Flanagan, Douglas Bukowski, John R. Schmidt, Roger Biles, Arnold R. Hirsch, William J. Grimshaw, Monroe Anderson, Steve Neal, Steve Rhodes, and Laura S. Washington.

This award-winning study of ethnic life in Chicago richly details the various peoples and ethnic institutions in America's heartland city. This newly revised and expanded edition also includes chapters on African-American migration, Chatham, Latino Chicago, the Chinese in Chicago, Asian Indians, Korean-Americans, the new entrepreneurial immigrants, and the Swedes. There is also a new six-chapter section that examines saloons, sports, crime, churches, neighborhoods, and cemeteries.

This is a political biography of Hazen S. Pingree, Mayor of Detroit from 1890-1897, who established the first significant social reform administration of the time.

The American Mayor offers a unique ranking of the nation's big-city mayors by expert scholars. Although the mayoralty is one of the most important political executive offices, it has escaped the kind of evaluations by which scholars have ranked American presidents. Now, thanks to Melvin Holli, we have a comparable survey of the "best" and "worst" mayors, covering some 730 mayors from the big-fifteen cities, from the beginning of the modern office in 1820 to the 1990s. The poll of historians, biographers, and social scientists produced a remarkably strong consensus.

Who were our best mayors? The list ranges from Boston's "Great Mayor" Josiah Quincy (1823-1828) to New York City's Fiorello La Guardia (1934-1945), who is first on the all-time-best list. La Guardia, a stouthearted fireplug of a man, built modern New York, fought Murder Incorporated, read the comics to children over the air during a newspaper strike, and was a symbol of ethnic probity and honesty. Sandwiched between Quincy and La Guardia are several other outstanding mayors, including Cleveland's Tom Johnson (1901-1909), Pittsburgh's David Lawrence (1946-1959), Detroit's Hazen Pingree (1890-1897), and Los Angeles's Tom Bradley (1973-1993).

Taking the first-worst prize among scoundrel mayors is Chicago's William H. "Big Bill" Thompson (1915-1923, 1927-1931), one of the most colorful mayors in the city's history, if not the most corrupt. Big Bill, also known as "Kaiser Bill" for his pro-German stand during World War I, accepted campaign funds from gangsters including Al Capone. Also among the "worst" is another Chicago mayor, Jane Byrne (1979-1983), the only woman on the list. Jersey City's Frank Hague (1917-1947) and Philadelphia's Frank Rizzo (1972-1980) are among the other notable rascals who have sat in city halls.

The American Mayor presents complete findings of Holli's poll in jargon-free fashion. Holli explains the results of the survey, gives biographical sketches of the ten best mayors, as well as some attention to the worst, and then uses the findings of modern leadership studies to explore mayoral success and failure. He concludes with a chapter titled "Pathways to Power," in which he reviews the New York City political milieu that produced the nation's "best" mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, and also examines the career of the nation's most successful big-city mayor, Buffalo's Grover Cleveland, the only mayor to become president of the United States.

"a good source of information as well as an interesting browsing item. It should be useful in high school, college, university, and public libraries." Reference Books Bulletin