Frank Rizzo: The Last Big Man in Big City America

Book Synopsis: Here at last is the first full-scale biography of Frank L. Rizzo, one of the most beloved and feared public figures in urban American history. Sweeping and finely detailed, this is a work of scholarship that reads like a novel. It is packed with colorful new details and revealing new stories about a man whose life demonstrated how the force of personality can affect history.

This biography is the entertaining saga of an immigrant family that begins in the arid Apennine Hills of southern Italy. It is the story of a man who defied his own father and the Irish-controlled Philadelphia Police Department to become one of the toughest cops in America. It is also a portrait of Rizzo's rise to unlikely political prominence, of how he became obsessed with power, betrayed his supporters, and spent more than a decade fighting for redemption.

Rizzo was loved. He was hated. And there was no one else like him. As cop, police commissioner, mayor, and consummate campaigner, Rizzo was the last of the big men who patrolled the urban landscape. And he became a symbol for the racial tensions that inflamed America's cities. He was center stage during the bloody struggles over civil rights, the war at home over Vietnam, and the expansion of political empowerment in the 1960s and 1970s. At a time when the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots have sparked a reexamination of police tactics and the nation's urban policies, it is vitally important to study the life of a man who had vast influence on both.

This book is filled with hidden treasures which will delight historians, students, political junkies, and the fans of Frank Rizzo and his critics. Read the newly discovered archival material that reveals the inside story of how Richard Nixon made Frank Rizzo the centerpiece of his 1972 reelection campaign - and Nixon's personal thoughts on their friendship.

Learn of Rizzo's implicit understanding with Angelo Bruno, the Docile Don of the South Philly mob, and read about how the men who ousted Bruno considered whacking Rizzo in a dispute over his son-in-law the bookie. For the first time, hear from the man who gave Frank Rizzo a very famous lie detector test.

Also revealed in this book are the private meetings and secret deals of Rizzo's five campaigns for mayor, including his pact with Sam Katz to beat Ron Castille in the 1991 Republican primary in Philadelphia, and the real story of how Rizzo planned to beat Ed Rendell and return to power.

For the first time, too, Frank Rizzo's wife Carmella and his family have agreed to cooperate fully, providing access to family records and photographs. In many ways, this book is like a home movie of Philadelphia's most famous family, which had carefully guarded its privacy for five decades.

But these pages contain much, much more than one man's story. For the first time anywhere, this biography delivers more than 100 years of riveting Philadelphia history, including the media wars, the government corruption, and the personal struggles for political power from Boies Penrose to John Street.

It is filled with the men and women who make the Frank Rizzo story so compelling. There is Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Angelo Bruno, Nicky Scarfo, Walter Annenberg, Richardson Dilworth, Jim Tate, Pete Camiel, Cecil Moore, Charles Bowser, Lucien Blackwell, Wilson Goode, Bill Gray, Bill Green, Billy Meehan, Ed Rendell, Arlen Specter, Ron Castille, Lynne Abraham, and Sam Katz.

The life of Frank Rizzo is a uniquely American tale, the story of an American city in the American century. Never before has it been told with such delicacy, insight, and perspective.