The Philadelphia that Mayor Edward G. Rendell inherits in January 1992 is coming apart at the seams. Actually, there are no seams, only great gushing wounds. Mortal wounds, it is feared. Crime is more wicked and vicious and random than ever.
Race war seems imminent.
And Congress is hanging the sword of base closure over the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The only thing between the City of Brotherly Love and disaster is former District Attorney Rendell, a profane, paunchy, impulsive, intelligent and passionate man. But in this case, the story is true. As far as it goes. In his preface, Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, writes of the deep sorrow he felt when he looked at the crumbling row houses, drug corners and abandoned factories of his once-proud Philadelphia.