num_pages: 576
description: "A great book... with the testimonial force equal to that of Michael Herr's Dispatches ."— TimeEdward Conlon's Blue Blood is an ambitious and extraordinary work of nonfiction about what it means to protect, to serve, and to defend among the ranks of New York's finest. Told by a fourth generation NYPD, this is an anecdotal history of New York as experienced through its police force, and depicts a portrait of the teeming street life of the city in all its horror and splendor. It is a story about police politics, fathers and sons, partners who become brothers, old ghosts and undying legacies.  Conlon joined the NYPD during the Giuliani administration, when New York City saw its crime rate plummet but also witnessed events that would alter the city, its inhabitants, and its police force polarizing racial cases, the proliferation of the drug trade, and the events of September 11, 2001, and its aftermath. Conlon captures the detail of the landscape, the ironies and rhythms of natural speech, the tragic and the marvelous, firsthand, day after day. A New York Times Notable Book and Finalist for The National Book Criticics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
language: English
title: Blue Blood
titlecomplete: Blue Blood
characters: American Law Enforcement
genres: Biography, True Crime, History, Autobiography, Police, Crime, New York, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Memoir
ratings_count: 1771
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Anthony Award
category: Best Nonfiction, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: New York City Book Award
category: Book of the Year, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: General Nonfiction
publisher: Riverhead Books