If Cohen and Rendell had any plan for Philadelphia (they must have) beyond busting the unions, Bissinger does not tell what it was. Bissinger reveals the seemingly well-intentioned, hard-working, honest Mayor Rendell to be a self-indulgent, out-of-control, reporter-assaulting, sexual-harassing, frat boy, with precious few accomplishments since his first year as mayor. I finished it depressed and disillusioned with them all. I started this book determined to like Rendell, like Bissinger, like their story, and learn from Philadelphia. Yet Cohen and Rendell took on the unions, balanced the budget, and restored the faith of Wall Street in a place that had been a laughingstock. Most people think that cities like Philadelphia haven't got a prayer. So Bissinger set himself up in a corner of Cohen's office in City Hall, with a note pad and a picture of his children, and began to report A Prayer for the City. Journalist Buzz Bissinger decided to find out, and begged newly elected Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell's campaign manager (later chief of staff), David Cohen, to let him follow the mayor around through one full four-year term of office, from January 1992 to January 1996. $25.95 WHAT IS it like to live in a city with a well-intentioned, hard-working, honest mayor? Washingtonians wonder. Fascinating, humane ( The New Yorker) and alive with detail and insight, A Prayer for the City describes the rare combination of political courage and optimism that may be the only hope for America's urban centers.A PRAYER FOR THE CITY By Buzz Bissinger Random House. It is also the story of citizens in crisis: a woman fighting ceaselessly to give her great-grandchildren a better life, a father of six who may lose his job at the Navy Shipyard, and a policy analyst whose experiences as a crime victim tempt her to abandon her job and ideals. A Prayer for the City is acclaimed journalist Buzz Bissinger's true epic of Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell, an utterly unique, unorthodox, and idiosyncratic leader willing to go to any length for the sake of his city: take unions head on, personally lobby President Clinton to save 10,000 defense jobs, or wrestle Smiley the Pig on Hot Dog Day-all the while bearing in mind the eternal fickleness of constituents whose favor may hinge on a missed garbage pick-up or an overzealous meter maid.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Friday Night Lights, the heart-wrenching and hilarious true story of an American city on its knees and a man who will do anything to save it.

A Prayer for the City by H.G. Bissinger