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MAN OF THE HOUSE: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O'Neill by O'Neill, Thomas P. with William Novak
Stated 1st Edition
Book Description
NY: Random House, 1987 FIRST EDITION (stated), FIRST PRINTING (Random House Number Line: 24689753). Hardcover with unclipped dust jacket. 8vo (6.5 x 9.5"). viii, (ii), 387. (3) pp. Quarter bound in publisher's black cloth over red boards, gilt lettering between red borders on spine and cover. Illustrated with 16 pages of glossy B&W photographs. This is a new, unopened copy with a gift inscription on ffep, else as new. Dust jacket, now in Mylar, is fine. FINE/FINE. 'Tip O'Neill, one of America's most colorful public figures, is a master politician - and a master storyteller, a man of wit and wisdom. First elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1936, O'Neill has had an extraordinary political career spanning 50 years, including a decade as Speaker of the House. These memoirs feature everyone from Boston politicos - unforgettable characters like Ralph Granara, Paddy Hynes and Up-Up Kelly - to America's biggest political names - the Kennedys, every president since FDR, and legendary personalities like James Michael Curley, the mayor of Boston immortalized in The Last Hurrah. He describes his complex ties with the Kennedys - his early encounters with old Joe Kennedy, whose formidable political machine bought a congressional seat for JFK, whom Tip later replaced in the House. He confides his dislike for Bobby Kennedy ('a self-important upstart') and his doubts about the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Commissions's conclusions. Canny folk hero O'Neill alludes here to another such, the legendary mayor of Boston: "When the good Lord made James Michael Curley, He broke the mold"; and if you substitute his own name, you have the flavor of this knowing, pietistic, jolly, seductive memoir, written with Novak, coauthor of Iacocca. In the all-but-vanished tradition of ward healer, the retired Speaker of the House, writing in the first person, blends treacle ("I would work to make sure my own people could go to places like Harvard") and shrewdness ("power accumulates when people think you have power") idealism and pragmatism, humor and heft as he relates anecdotes about the national figures he has dealt with in Washington, D. C. and politicians in Massachusetts where he spent eight terms in the legislature before joining Congress in 1952. Like "a good Irish pol who can carry on six conversations at once, " O'Neill talks about baseball, poker and his boyhood gang, issues of governance and the functioning of Congress, in which he served for 34 years. "All politics is local, " he writes, and this memoir makes that a truism, bringing national imperatives back home to the national constituency. It's no accident that the first chapter in this anecdotal memoir is titled "All Politics Is Local." . Stated 1st Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.
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