Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics

by Joyce Purnick

Overview

A biography of the business mogul, former New York City mayor, and 2020 democratic presidential candidate

Mike Bloomberg has repeatedly defied the standard models for success. He has never won a crowd over with his speaking prowess. Rooms do not hush with anticipation when he enters. Celebrity stalkers do not haunt him. But his unparalleled achievements drip with the dynamism that his public persona lacks. His penchant for problem solving and impressive ability to chart his own path has led to his great success as a business genius, self-made billionaire, and influential mayor. In this brilliant biography, former New York Times columnist and editor Joyce Purnick unravels this great American enigma from his childhood in the suburbs of Boston, to his rise on Wall Street and the creation of Bloomberg L.P., to his mayoral record and controversial campaign trail for a third term.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781586488994
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	09/28/2010
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	840,402
Product dimensions:	6.94(w) x 11.34(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Joyce Purnick, a veteran New York reporter and editor, wrote the award-winning Metro Matters column at the New York Times for ten years. She joined the paper in 1979, after writing at the New York Post and New York magazine, becoming the first woman to head the Times's City Hall bureau and its Metro department. She has, so far, covered six mayors of New York. Ms. Purnick, a Barnard College graduate, lives in Manhattan with her husband and is the admiring stepmother of three and grandmother of six.

Table of Contents

1 Never Enough 1

2 Escape from Medford 7

3 First Millions 25

4 Terminal Man 39

5 Crashing the A-list 55

6 Enter the High Roller 73

7 Tragedy Trumps Politics 91

8 Money, Money on the Wall 105

9 Managing City Hall 121

10 Olympian Dreams 137

11 Yes for Mayor, Not for Dinner 153

12 See Mike Not Run 163

13 Finding Act III 175

14 Money Money from City Hall 191

15 Footprints 203

16 Many a Difference 219

Acknowledgments 229

A Note about Attribution 233

Index 235

Editorial Reviews

Village Voice, January 20, 2011
“For those wondering why it has taken so long for the mayor's unexplained weekend absences to grab hold in the media, we direct you to Joyce Purnick's Bloomberg bio…”

From the Publisher

Purnick's reporting…is detailed and delightful.
—The New York Times

George Anders

Generally admiring biography of the New York politician whom many have criticized but few have outflanked. Former New York Times columnist Purnick has been on the mayoral beat for years. Her study of Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor, takes a heavy human-interest approach, more befitting a magazine piece than the front page. We learn that Bloomberg, in the manner of Elvis, is fond of peanut butter and burnt bacon, and that his style of managing "takes self-control, coolness, a refusal to indulge emotions or denounce the obstacles, and no vindictiveness or grudge-holding." Those are good traits for a politico to have, to be sure-even one who spent $100, by Purnick's reckoning, for every vote he won in the second-term 2005 race, and who revels in "racist, sexist and homophobic jokes" that would normally put an end to a political career backed by shallower pockets. The author does a solid job contrasting Bloomberg's style with predecessor Rudy Giuliani's. "Avuncular he is not," Purnick avers, but Bloomberg gets things done, including carefully lobbying for a suspension of the term-limits rule to bag himself a third tour of the mayor's office. The author's careful account of that victory-a worthy case study for anyone seeking ways to game a system designed to protect voters from anti-democratic dynasties-is worth the price of the book. A touch too uncritical for readers brought up on hardnosed journalistic takes on politicians, but of interest to students of Gotham politics. Agent: Jane Gelfman/Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents

Kirkus Reviews