The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life

In the 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 set a promising example for the rejuvenation of our major cities. Someone who has worked with Giuliani as well as studied him, Siegel regards Giuliani 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 enormous ego and tribal ethos serve the city’s well-being, promoting 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.