Best known for his "How'm I doing?" approach to politics and life, as well as his candid stands on controversial issues, Ed Koch survived his years in public office by being the most outspoken and candid mayor in the history of New York City. Citizen Koch is an insightful, funny, and outrageous memoir about life, politics, and the City of New York. Ed's taken off the gloves and bares all about the highs and lows of his mayoralty and life. Besides being a hard-hitting, unusually honest political memoir, Citizen Koch is filled with heartfelt reminiscences from Koch's life - his childhood working as a hatcheck boy in a Newark dancehall with his immigrant parents during the Depression, his years living in Brooklyn, his World War II experiences as a Sergeant in the 104th Infantry Division, his time as a young attorney, and much, much more. Best of all, he chronicles his introduction to politics and offers a private and personal recounting of his nine years as a U.S. Congressman and three terms as Mayor of New York City. And, for the first time, Ed discusses his contemplation of suicide during the corruption crisis that clouded his third term. In Citizen Koch, Ed Koch also provides hilarious anecdotes and witty reminiscences from his years in public life, including wonderful stories from his time in Gracie Mansion and visits with Menachem Begin, Sir Laurence Olivier, Leonard Bernstein, Mother Teresa, and audiences with Presidents Bush and Nixon, Daniel Ortega, Pope John Paul II, and many, many others. And, perhaps best of all, Ed discusses his life out of office and offers up his opinions on many of the issues facing America today. Citizen Koch is the most candid, searching, and intimateportrait of one of our best-known public figures.

In this first post-9/11 account of the career of the man who established himself as America's Mayor in the dark days after America was attacked, Fred Siegel shows how Rudy Giuliani's successes in New York--restoring law and order, cutting taxes and radically reducing the welfare rolls--demonstrated that Gotham was indeed governable (a matter of doubt until his election) and that our major cities might again become vibrant and dynamic places to live after thirty years of middle-class flight. Someone who has worked with Giuliani as well as studied him, Siegel describes this colorful figure as an immoderate centrist, who, like the city he came to embody, evokes contradictory emotions. For some, he was a ruthless autocrat during his years at city hall; for others, he was a heroic figure who took on the vested interests that had dragged the city down. Siegel regards Guiliani as a shrewd tactician and artist of the possible who could have stepped out of the pages of Machiavelli's THE PRINCE. A self-promoting, self-absorbed man, the mayor made his own enormous ego serve the city's well-being. He promoted the virtues of duty and sacrifice, but was sometimes unable to honor these values in his personal life. He was suspicious of those outside his immediate circle, but he also placed this tribal ethos in the service of ideals that transcended New York's ethnic politics and business as usual. THE PRINCE OF THE CITY is at once a fascinating character study, a history of New York over the last forty years, and a classic inquiry into the issue of how cities thrive or die. Siegel's story culminates with a dramatic account of September 11, 2001, revealing how Giuliani's s eight years in office had prepared him and the city to rise to this tragic occasion. Siegel concludes with a look at how Guiliani's successor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has handled his legacy and at what the future might hold for America's Mayor.