Great book about Philadelphia during Ed Rendell's first term as Mayor of Philly in the nineties. Fascinating look at urban decline and attempts at urban renewal, public policy, politics, personality leadership, etc. Read it slowly over the course of a few months and it really shaped my understanding of Philadelphia as a city and sparked my desire to get to the neighborhoods and history more!

There's a good book to be found in the text of this book; the political chess-playing on its own would make a three-, maybe four-star book. But as it's presented, Bissinger's too fundamentally dishonest and crowd-pleasing in his presentation for this to merit serious consideration as meaningful nonfiction. He seems to lack all respect for his presumed audience, between his narrative gimmicks and the sheer transparency of his emotional manipulation; it comes across as an insecurity in the strength of the story he's chosen, which is unfortunate, as it was strong enough without his intrusive modifications. Some of this is small stuff, like his providing gratuitous details to no purpose (half a page listing Philadelphia's firsts, half a page of the names of ships built at the navy yard, etc.), which feels mostly like an attempt at padding out a term paper; he might argue that such expansive lists were included to impress sheer scale upon the reader, but simple numbers would be sufficient to impress that same scale. His choice, too, to take intermittent excursions from the overtly political bulk of the text to drop in on the lives of four citizens feels like another misjudgement of his audience, like either desperate attempts to keep his audience from getting bored or periodical reminders that this book's story of politics is a fundamentally human one, as if that could ever be forgotten. His personal biases also come across without much effort made toward concealment (and the efforts that are made are so lackluster as to have the effecting of highlighting), and without even bothering forth arguments in their favor, let alone successful ones.

Most concerning is the artificiality of the narrative he massages into such a construction so as to be able to say to any kind of reader (broadly, we might break these potential subsets into pro-government and anti-government groups), "Ha, I proved you wrong. This isn't going where you thought it was, and I'm not supporting your case," but also, "You should be commended for believing that, but that doesn't make you right." This frustrating double-rebuttal is not dubious for the emotion it provokes; frustration is a perfectly valid emotion to elicit, and likely would have been the one elicited by a straighter retelling of the facts (indeed, even without Bissinger's reckless and undecorous ramping-up, the undoctored version of events would likely play as black comedy with an honestly-earned, multifaceted tragicomic tone), but the manner of extraction here removes any power from the fact of the situation and gives it all to Bissinger himself; under the guise of offering a balanced portrayal, Bissinger actually merely ensures that his book will end up as utterly unchallenging to readers of any and all points of view. He seems to have more of a congratulatory interest in lionizing himself and his readers for whatever beliefs they may or may not have in America's system of government, and in blaming its players broadly, than in truly analyzing that same system. As a result, this book fails my standard litmus test for effective nonfiction, which is, roughly, to raise as many more questions as it answers; Bissinger is uninterested in such questions and answers, assumes his readership is as well, and so disregards them altogether.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

It took me a long time to finish it, but incredibly well done book. Provided a history of the city in a particular time, while also providing a deeper history on certain topics. It told this story while weaving in specific people’s stories/experiences within Philly to highlight what was happening at a larger scale in the city / what Mayor Rendell was working on.

Funny, raw, and objective. I’m not a big sports guy, but I want to read Friday Night Lights for the incredible writing of Bissinger.

If you loved the West Wing TV series, there are good chances that you’ll like this book. The author somehow finagled permission to be a fly on the wall during the Ed Rendell’s first term as Philadelphia’s Mayor (1992 – 1995), embedding himself in the Chief of Staff’s office, sitting in the shadows during executive meetings, even listening outside the door during tense confidential negotiations over navy yard reuse proposals. Readers are granted shockingly unfettered access to the internal workings of city government at the highest level – we are spectators at the Administration’s finest hours and most cringe-worthy stumbles. I’m still amazed at what Bissinger was allowed to witness.

What makes the narrative even more interesting is that the 1990s was a pivotal turning point for American cities, in a way that some guessed at in the moment but really became apparent only a decade or so later. White flight, the crack epidemic, race riots, Cabrini Green-like public housing projects, and de-industrialization had culminated in horrific conditions that left cities broke, crime-ridden, and plagued with poverty-related issues. Everything peaked in the 1990s: Administrations that realized that they were the last, best chance to “save a dying and obsolete city” took radical measures, capitalized on the economic boom of the 1990s, and entered the 21st century with enough economic momentum and attractive assets to lure in urbanophile Millennials. (See: Philadelphia, thanks to Rendell). The alternative was complete collapse of the city, following by the total implosion of the economy in nearby suburbs (see: Detroit. Gary. Flint). So not only does A Prayer for The City deliver a fascinating insider view, but what we’re watching is a desperate Administration try everything it can think of to pull a City back from the brink. “We’re shameless,” the Chief of Staff told the author. “We’ll play every card.”

The book offers thoughtful, poignant portraits of two men - Mayor Ed Rendell and his Chief of Staff, David Cohen – and in so doing, it offers insights into what it takes in terms of temperament and time allocation to excel at those jobs. We vote for Mayors, but do we actually know what they do, what they can do, to “create change”? Bissinger makes a compelling case that one of the Mayor’s key contributions was his relentless cheerleading: Rendell’s optimism “changed the entire feel of the city, to the point where the perpetual focus wasn’t on the litany of problems, but on what maybe, just maybe, could be done. As if by constantly talking about all that might be coming and planning for it as if it were already here, it somehow was already here. In a way, he wasn’t America’s Mayor but America’s first publicly elected cult leader, winning hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands on the basis of blind faith.” Even if he did have to do it by wrestling with six-foot pig mascots to promote a local hot dog business, or undertake any number of ridiculous shticks to market the city as an entertainment destination for suburbanites with money to burn.

(Of course, I also ate up the fact that both my employer and my boss were mentioned by name in the section about the 5-year financial plan that brought city government back from near-bankruptcy. “A manifesto for dramatic and radical and unprecedented change in an American city” – yeah, I think I’ll tell my Mom that that’s what I do for a living.)

My only reservation is that the narrative flow can feel like learning to drive a manual transmission – the adrenaline rush of union stand-downs and navy yard sale negotiations screech to a halt for a profile of a Philadelphia resident. I understand that the author included these profiles to give the reader a visceral image of the people whose lives hang in the balance, people like a soon-to-be laid-off welder, an African-American grandma raising her great grandkids in a crack neighborhood, a yuppie couple who are driven from their Center City townhouse after one too many violent crimes, etc. It’s all good content, it’s just awkwardly shoe-horned into the Rendall Administration story in a way that’s distracting at best and deflating at worst.

All in all, I can’t believe this isn’t standard reading among urbanists.

Brilliantly written book about the challenges of being the CEO of an older industrial city in America. Not to be missed by anyone who loves cities.

This was a fascinating book - the author (I'm not quite sure how he blagged his way into it and I highly doubt you would ever get this level of access today) managed to get privileged insider access to the first term of the Philadelphia mayoralty of Ed Rendell in the years 1992-95. He utilised this front row seat to produce a compelling history of the struggle to save a city that many had already given up on and riven by the familiar American urban themes of decay - drugs, violence, debt, racism and the flight of the middle classes to the safety of the suburbs.

Once the scene is set for just how badly the city of Philadelphia is screwed (hint; extremely) for the incoming mayor and his team, then the book swiftly chronicles the various elemental challenges that face the new city administration - starting with the monumental task of facing down the public unions in order to stop the city going bankrupt. Once that is achieved, the tasks only get harder! The mayor and his workaholic Chief of Staff, David Cohen, strive against seemingly impossible odds to create a future for their city and, amazingly, when you consider the long-term trends stacked up against them, succeed.

Rendell and Cohen come across as the right kinds of public servant - bold, energetic, visionary - but we also meet far too many of the wrong kind, only interested in power and the rewards that flow from that. Bissinger also further contextualises the struggle to save the city by framing the lives of four of its inhabitants throughout the pages - an African American great-grandmother who has already lost much of her family to drugs and violence in the ghettos of North Philly, a welder at the once-mighty Navy Yards, a public homicide prosecutor who seems to take a savage delight in putting away criminals for life without parole and a committed evangelist for city living who is ultimately disillusioned and forced to move to the safety of the suburbs after one mugging too many.

The narrative has a novelistic feel to it and even though the action is spread over four years, the tension of these epochal events is maintained throughout. The characters also leap off the page - I do think that Bissinger has more than a touch of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to his portrayals of Cohen and Rendell but when you consider their achievement today, the saving of the city itself, this is understandable.

Should be required reading for anyone interested in politics, urban decay and renewal, or just anyone who likes a heroic tale enthrallingly told.

I read this book for a public policy class while obtaining my Masters. This was one of the books that really kept my interest. It takes a look at the inside life of a mayor (of Philadelphia) and all the issues that he has to deal with. Definitely a book that I would re-read in the future.

What I Learned:

1) Why Ed Rendell is rightly regarded as a secular god.

2) How messed up municipal Philly politics are.

3) We're all in deep, deep trouble.

Great insight into the politics in Philly.

I'm a fourth generation Philly native (dad's side). This book paints a really intricate portrait of the city ands its major players. It's a time investment - it's a lengthy, detailed work, but well worth it if you know Philly and/or have an interest in cities.

Required reading for anyone doing impactful work in the city.

The product of four years embedded in Ed Rendell's first term as Mayor of Philadelphia in the early '90s, Bissinger's book is an engrossing history of how years of poorly considered public policy created decades of economic decline and a fascinating tour of big city politics.