Basic Brown: My Life and Our Times
Brown, [b]lack, urban, flamboyant, politically adroit, is part hardworking politician and part legend. A political career [had] never entered [his] mind, when the teenaged Texas country boy arrived in San Francisco in 1951. Thirty years later, Brown became Speaker of the California Assembly, a triply historic event: he won with bipartisan support, was the first African-American to do so and served longer than any else in the position; then from 1996 to 2003, he was San Francisco's mayor. Brown's autobiography is a candid and fascinating how-to-succeed-in-politics, crammed with down-to-earth reality tips not common in civics texts. He advises how to dress, work a party and manage one's own scandals. But Brown did not achieve political power by merely window dressing and shares his mastery of the finer and lesser points of political strategy. He revisits the major controversies of his reign in the assembly and the successes of which he is most proud. The real Slick Willie, Clinton called him; Brown says simply, I'm unique. His always lively and often self-serving account is a candid tutorial for aspiring politicians and ordinary folk who enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at how local (and sometimes national) government works. Illus.(Feb.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.