This book is about Ed Rendell as Mayor of Philly. I liked it but of course I'm baised. But if you want to know why Fast Eddie was called "America's Mayor", then headed the DNC and then became Gov of PA this book explains his talents

NF - Account of Rendell's turnaround of Philadelphia as Mayor

Manages to be both incredibly inspiring and mortifyingly depressing. Contains the best explanation that I've ever read of how FDR's New Deal intentionally tried (and mostly succeeded) to gut cities in favor of suburbs in the most racist, cruel, and demonstrably calculated ways imaginable. But a fantastic book, and an incredible guide for other failing cities.

A compelling chronicle of Edward Rendell's first year as mayor of Philadelphia. Recommended for those who have a special affection for the City of Brotherly Love, as well as for students of urban politics.

As an inside look at how politics gets done in a big city, this is pretty much unparallelled, and all of its observations about how cities have been abandoned and screwed over are pretty much right on the money.

So why didn't I like this? I think Bissinger's writing is pretty unimpressive - the whole thing has these weird macho New Journalism airs about it, which I recognize as an attempt to spice things up but feels a little overcompensating. Nevertheless, it's 100% necessary reading for understanding why Philly is how it is.

This is not only an engaging and thorough look at the state of American cities in the 20th century, but a revealing look at one of America’s most overlooked cities, Philadelphia. Rereading this book in 2020 while living in Philadelphia, I wonder how much of the issues highlighted by the book have been addressed? The city is way more gentrified, Queen Village is now a true Yuppie Paradise as is Graduate Hospital. Is that all it takes? To have the neighborhoods that were underserved and poor, be filled up by wealthier residents who have more clout and money in order to be turned around? As those same gentrifiers turn their focus to North Philadelphia, will it look and feel entirely different by 2030? Probably. I wonder what Power Broker Extraordinaire Cohen would say about the city now.

This would be a great book for anyone interested in urban planning and/or politics...really for anyone hooked on city life. It's well-written and funny, and I stayed up late to read it three nights in a row.

Great read, great writing

I decided to read this because I don't know much about city-level politics, even less than I know about other types of politics. The author, Buzz Bissinger, spent four years--1992-1995, an entire term in office--following around Ed Rendell and David Cohen, the mayor and chief of staff of Philadelphia. It's a book about Rendell, about his massive and at times almost unbearably painful struggle to rescue his city before it capsized, but it's also a book about Philadelphia and the larger subject of cities and urban culture.
I have to say, sometimes nonfiction can be a bitch to read, not because it's boring or dry, but because when bad things happen they are true. Despite the fact that Rendell made massive moves forward during his first term as mayor, the message of this book seems to be this: Cities are awesome, and also, they are dying. The middle class is fleeing, the tax base is dropping, the economic gaps are spreading, and most people don't seem to care. For every step forward, more jobs are lost and more people die, and it begins to feel less like a natural life cycle than like decay. And somehow, even though I love being in non-city places, this breaks my heart.

Sometimes the "sausage" produces worthy results.

An intimate portrait of philadelphia from 1989-1993, the first term of the Rendell administration. Bissinger covers the experience of Philadelphians from center city to north philly, the navy yard to Chestnut Hill, tracking with Rendell's first-term challenges as examples of the common plight of post-industrial American cities. One upshot is that 20 years later it seems like Rendell's first term represented the nadir of those crises. The industrial jobs never came back, but the tourist industry has grown significantly -- something newer residents may not believe, given the awful state of much of the Riverfront along the Delaware (just read this book as a comparison if you don't believe me). Bissinger doesn't say much about the universities or the hospitals as centers of job creation (for both skilled and unskilled labor) and drawers of talent, which makes me wonder how much equity those institutions represented back then compared to today. Then there is the rise of Comcast, the much smaller but growing footprint of the casinos...

So the urban drain has slowed, but still the poor are always with us. Between the 2000 and 2010 census the median household income for Philadelphians dropped by 15% -- a story picked up in part (the fishtown/Kensington part) by Charles Murray in his 2012 book Coming Apart.

I grew up in Philly, spent 16 years of schooling there, and now live in South Jersey and still work in Philly. I learned more about the city during the 1.5 weeks I was reading this book than I did in all that other time combined. The depth of the reporting, the range of stories covered, the ability to sort through reams of information-- it's all really impressive.

But it's not just a Philly book-- it's a book about the slow decay of the American city and the ways people have tried to combat that death, with all the inherent political mess that comes with that territory. Although the 92-96 timeframe may seem dated, it's actually more fascinating now to see it because the book opens with Mayor Rendell saying his economic plan will shape the city for the next 25 years. 21 years after that proclamation, it's possible to really see where some of the changes in this city are rooted.

Every now and then Bissinger gets a little carried away with ludicrous metaphors and imposes his voice on the story in distracting ways (and it was weird how he seemed to immediately and instinctively side with Rendell's camp during the incidents when he sexually harassed and/or actually assaulted women), but overall the prose is strong and clear and crisp and everything else you'd expect from a writer of this pedigree.