Windy City: A Novel of Politics

I read and enjoy everything Scott Simon writes. I especially love it when he writes about Chicago - my home town. So, if you like politics or Chicago or both, this book is for you.

In Windy City, Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition, gives readers a fun and funny whirlwind tour of modern Chicago politics - and it's not your father's Chicago politics. Heck, as someone just old enough to remember the first Mayor Daley, it's not even my generation's Chicago politics. Campaign finance limits and open government laws (not to mention limits on indoor smoking) have pushed even Chicago pols out of the smoke-filled back room and into the sunshine. No, it's not clean government Wisconsin (but then neither is Wisconsin anymore!), but at least voting mostly terminates with breathing. Windy City opens with the legendary African-American mayor of the `City that Works' face down in his Quattro's pizza. He's not drunk or exhausted, he's dead. As the reader soon learns, the Mayor has been murdered. Enter our protagonist, Sundaran `Sunny' Roopini, alderman from the 48th and thrust into the role of Acting Interim Mayor for three days until the city council chooses one of its own to serve as successor until the next election. Solving the murder gets shove aside as the book centers around the struggle to get enough votes from the council's 50 members. Simon deftly explores Chicago's multi-ethnic politics along with its multi-ethnic restaurants. Roopini is the widowed restaurateur of an Indian restaurant that also serves Sunny Roopini's Italian Specialities (his vowel-ended name suggest Italian origins to some potential customers and he's not going to turn them away.)! Sunny beats the bushes for alderman Vera Barrow and most of his work takes place in various ethnic dining and drinking establishments - and a couple churches, too. Food is a center point second only to politics. The politics are not entirely clean and Roopini also spends some time answering the inquiries of US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. And the politics are definitely played with sharpened elbows. Simon captures the multi-faceted motivations of these politicians. They want to serve people and see their own ideas implemented. They also want to continue serving and thus must also attend to the needs, wants, and desires of their constituents. The book illustrates Tip O'Neill's adage that `all politics is local'. Fight for your high-flown principles, pal, but you better get the snow plowed and the potholes filled. Any elected official of even the smallest township will recognize some ultimate truths of politics in Windy City. Seemingly in an effort to introduce over-the-top humor, Simon slips into occasional flights of fancy that threaten to send the book crashing into the green waters of the Chicago River. The book does not need it; Simon's caricatures of the pols and the politics are strong enough without the silliness. Highly recommended.

I spent six years in Evanston as a college student and have been on a Chicagoland board for the past ten years that brings me back 5-6 times a year in all four seasons. So while I live on a "coast", I feel like an adopted Chicagoan. The murder mystery and all the political intrigue in this novel were finely wrought, but I experienced all of that as large buffet table on which Scott Simon is able to serve up heaping helpings of admiration and love for all things Chicago: * The bitter cold winters that serve to bind Chicagoans together, making them stronger, tougher, and better prepared to handle the vicissitudes of life. * The strong ethnic and racial identities (for better and for worse). * The emphasis on cooking and especially eating of all different sorts of ethnic and national cuisines. * Politics as sport. Food as sport. Sports as sport. * The city that works. Putting aside whatever graft may occur, the idea that every citizen has an Alderman who can help cut through bureaucracy and get problems solved and things done is quite alluring. As if each Alderman is a bit of a super hero. * The beauty of Lake Michigan, the soaring architectural statements, the bridges over the Chicago River, Millennium Park (with its "bean"), the hustle and bustle of the "El", the Art Institute. I love this novel for capturing the essence and joy of Chicago.

I have always thought that Scott Simon was one of the best writers in broadcasting. More often then not, I have found myself sitting back in my kitchen on a Saturday morning and taking in his words as they flow almost effortlessly from my radio. I also know that writing like this is never effortless. The man has great talent. Now it appears this talent has translated to fiction as well. And that's not as easy as people might think. Consider asking a pediatrician to perform brain surgery tomorrow. Writing for radio and fiction are really very different forms. Simon has captured a marvelous look at our country in the beginning of the 21st century by focusing on, of all things, the colorful politics of Cook County. When you really think about it, what could possibly be more American? And he has accomplished this with his great humor and vivid knack for description. I don't often laugh out loud when I am reading books. I did here. I also found the opening description of a politician's view of what it takes to get votes and what it means to enter the arena as one of the single best descriptions of our flawed and fabulous democratic system. I have read it over several times, as I did other passages in this really great book. Finally, a personal story: a few years ago, I was visiting a friend who lives on the north side of Chicago. She and her husband live with their one daughter in a three bedroom home that was once owned by a Catholic family with ten children. It was summer and we were sitting on the front porch. She described her neighborhood by the people who passed by. There was a gay couple pushing a baby carriage. There was "Big Ed", the retired Chicago Cop who chatted with the couple. There were at least three different nationalities. It was a very different world than the one we all grew up in. But there was one thing in common with the past -- everyone waved to us on the porch. That's the world that Scott Simon has brilliantly captured. A crazy world of constant change but still holding on to the main institution that binds us all together. Great job!

Windy City: A Novel of Politics Windy City is a fun book that parodies Chicago politics and urban ethnic culture in the course of a murder. Scott Simon is the ideal author for such a book. Like me, he is a "Chicagoan Away" as described in his memoir Home and Away. And, like that book, it treats one familiar with Chicago geography, politics and ethnicity with waves of nostalgia and authenticity. The story revolves around the Alderman of Chicago's 48th Ward, an Indian American restaurant owner serving as Vice Mayor when the African American Mayor, his ally, dies - from a poisoned pizza. He assumes the role of Acting Mayor as described in the Chicago charter and as happened after the deaths of Richard J. Daley and Harold Washington, especially Harold Washington. Like any book of this kind, it pledges that the characters are fictional. But the similarities of some with real life characters are inescapable. The murdered Mayor has some remarkable similarities to the city's only African American Mayor Harold Washington. I worked for Harold as counsel to city's civil rights agency and as his liaison to the city's Asian Americans. Much of my job came close to the world of this book. Like the murdered Mayor, Harold used long words, ate as with the same gusto that he practiced politics ( I remember taking him to Korean, Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants - he returned to some after closing for extra helpings). And he died at his desk also, though from a heart attack not from a poisoned pizza. Like this Mayor, his sexuality took second place to his politics. But unlike this Mayor, who was gay, Harold's orientation was more ambiguous, though like this Mayor, it wasn't a significant part of his life. Also, Harold, while a practical politician, was less accepted by the shockingly racist party power structure and was also much more committed to both reform and civil rights for groups beyond his own. Perhaps if he had lived and white Chicago got over some of its deep prejudice, this world would be a result. It is, as I have heard from some of my friends even on the other side of Chicago's famous "Council Wars," it is hard to be so light-hearted about such a momentous and intense time. It wasn't funny that white liberals refused to accept a Black man pushing the issues that they cared about for decades. It wasn't funny that many in a one party town switched parties supporting even a - gasp- Republican when they happily supported white Democrats under indictment. Chicagoans usually treat politics like sports, but the mid-1980's were a political race war that enabled a less racist city thereafter. Nevertheless, consoling myself in the fictional references, I loved the description of Chicago late winter weather and of the various ethnic settings. I worked Alderman Roopini's ward, the 48th, for Mayor Washington and I lived in the Wrigleyville ward. The Windy City Council was far more diversified and far more representative than the 20