Andrew Kirtzman, Giuliani: the Rise and Tragic Fall of America's Mayor. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2022. ISBN: 978-1-9821-5329-8.
The book is arranged in 16 chapters plus an introduction and an epilogue. In the introduction, the author tells the story of how he first met Giuliani. It was 1992, and it was Giuliani's first run for New York City mayor against Dinkins. Giuliani lost that first race, but he would eventually win the mayor's seat. After the introduction, we begin looking at his life. The narrative starts in a high point for Giuliani. It is after 9/11, the day he travels to England to receive an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. This is a great moment, and as we learn, he will fall from that height into some serious depths of darkness, greed, and even despair.
The rest of the narrative is not totally linear. There are moments we go back in time or forward, but a lot centers around 9/11 as a key moment for Giuliani. Along the way, we learn about his early life, Roman Catholic upbringing, his rise as lawyer, federal prosecutor, mayor of New York City, 9/11, and beyond. 9/11 is really the moment where he both becomes a star and a hero, but also lays the way to his fall, a fall that is often self-inflicted. Giuliani could be brilliant, but he could also be seriously self-destructive.
The author argues in the book that Giuliani developed a strong sense of righteousness; things are either right or wrong, light or dark, moral or immoral. There weren't many grey spaces in this thinking. A result of this is that he could justify to himself a lot of choices, including some very bad choices on the basis of his belief he was pursuing truth and/or doing the right thing. In recent years we see that kind of justification required a good amount of mental gymnastics.
In the book we see Giuliani in his professional as well as personal life. Much of the narrative presents him as a talented person who pursues politics and power. The story presents him starting out as the moral crusader that eventually changes for the worst. Yet to many who knew him as well as folks who remember his rise, the fatal flaws were always there. He was a serial philanderer. Politically, he may have started out as a moderate, but soon moved to the Right and kept on moving further right into conspiracies and other extremes. After 9/11, he could have had any number of good opportunities, opportunities that would've brought him good financial rewards as well as preserved the goodwill he had at the time. A combination of bad choices, hubris, arrogance, and a growing greed meant he destroyed his own legacy. Plus once he hitched his wagon to Trump's cause, it all went downhill from there.
This is pretty much an interesting book. The narrative moves along at a pretty good pace. However, it truly becomes a tragedy as we get to the final act. The man lived through 9/11, survived cancer, was a heroic prosecutor, but in the end becomes a joke, a dark and pathetic figure going down a path of perdition, and losing friends and family along the way. There is a strong sense of pathos by the end of the book. Yet we keep reading because we need to see the story to the end.
For those wanting to learn more about Giuliani, this book may be a good start. Along the way, we also meet some of the key figures in his life and how they saw Giuliani. Author did his research and interviewed as many folks as he could. The story also specifies different points of view on events. For further details, the author provides extensive notes for documentation.
Overall I liked the book and found it interesting. I feel I got to see parts of Giuliani not many might have seen. I tend to agree a lot of his flaws were always there; it was just his good moments provided good cover. For example, to many New York City residents he was the mayor who cleaned the city, but if you look closer, it came at the price of racists and repressive policies. It was the kind of price he was willing to pay. That price also paved the way to his downfall. The book is worth reading if you are interested in the topic. We see the highs and lows of Giuliani. This is not a hagiography. He was talented, but he was seriously flawed and morally bankrupt.
This book is a good selection for libraries' biography collections. I'd recommend it.
4 out of 5 stars.
* * * * *
Additional reading notes:
Giuliani's mistakes on 9/11, which were mostly cast aside:
"It was not until two years later that the national 9/11 Commission sorted out Giuliani's role in the disaster, and catalogued a list of catastrophic mistakes by his administration that left hundreds of polics and firefighters vulnerable on that awful morning. There was an argument to be made that Giuliani had cost lives on September 11 rather than saved them.
But try telling that to a public that was desperate for someone to take charge on the day that Islamic terrorists hijacked American planes and flew them into skyscrapers and the Pentagon. . . " (4).
Author's argument about Giuliani's descent:
"His descent was the result of a series of moral compromises made over the years as the temptations of power and money grew. There were any number of opportunities to do the right thing when he did the opposite" (8).
On Giuliani's righteousness:
". . .a righteousness aimed at those he saw as frauds and liars, as unworthy pretenders to high government office, as enemies of the people who believed, as he did, that corruption and grifters had to be expunged from public service. That righteousness was Giuliani's North Star, a source of strength, and, ultimately, a fatal flaw" (28).
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