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Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic
PublicAffairs
September 2013
On Sale: September 17, 2013
408 pages
ISBN: 1610393015
EAN: 9781610393010
Kindle: B00C8X1D7Q
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
How did a scrawny black kid—the son of a barber and a
domestic who grew up in Harlem and Trenton—become the 106th
mayor of New York City? It’s a remarkable journey. David
Norman Dinkins was born in 1927, joined the Marine Corps in
the waning days of World War II, went to Howard University
on the G.I. Bill, graduated cum laude with a degree in
mathematics in 1950, and married Joyce Burrows, whose
father, Daniel Burrows, had been a state assemblyman
well-versed in the workings of New York’s political machine.
It was his father-in-law who suggested the young
mathematician might make an even better politician once he
also got his law degree.
The political career of
David Dinkins is set against the backdrop of the rising
influence of a broader demographic in New York politics,
including far greater segments of the city’s “gorgeous
mosaic.” After a brief stint as a New York assemblyman,
Dinkins was nominated as a deputy mayor by Abe Beame in
1973, but ultimately declined because he had not filed his
income tax returns on time. Down but not out, he pursued his
dedication to public service, first by serving as city
clerk. In 1986, Dinkins was elected Manhattan borough
president, and in 1989, he defeated Ed Koch and Rudy
Giuliani to become mayor of New York City, the largest
American city to elect an African American mayor.
As
the newly-elected mayor of a city in which crime had risen
precipitously in the years prior to his taking office,
Dinkins vowed to attack the problems and not the victims.
Despite facing a budget deficit, he hired thousands of
police officers, more than any other mayoral administration
in the twentieth century, and launched the “Safe Streets,
Safe City” program, which fundamentally changed how police
fought crime. For the first time in decades, crime rates
began to fall—a trend that continues to this day. Among his
other major successes, Mayor Dinkins brokered a deal that
kept the US Open Tennis Championships in New York—bringing
hundreds of millions of dollars to the city annually—and
launched the revitalization of Times Square after decades of
decay, all the while deflecting criticism and some outright
racism with a seemingly unflappable demeanor. Criticized by
some for his handling of the Crown Heights riots in 1991,
Dinkins describes in these pages a very different version of
events.
A Mayor’s Life is a revealing look at
a devoted public servant and a New Yorker in love with his
city, who led that city during tumultuous times.
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