Books
Final chapter of mayor's biography revised

By Bob Minzesheimer
USA Today

NEW YORK — When City Hall reporter Andrew Kirtzman phoned his editor Sept. 11, his orders were emphatic: "Find Giuliani."

Which is what Kirtzman managed to do in the chaos of lower Manhattan, 10 minutes before the second tower collapsed at the World Trade Center.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani was five blocks away, temporarily reduced to "a wandering refugee," as Kirtzman writes in the paperback edition of his biography, "Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City" (Perennial, $13.95), out Tuesday.

Giuliani's calm, resolute response helped rally New Yorkers and made him a national hero. It also gave Kirtzman a dramatic new ending to a biography published last year and begun in anticipation of an epic Senate race: Giuliani vs. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Facing prostate cancer and a divorce, Giuliani quit the Senate campaign. But since Sept. 11, he has an unofficial title: "America's Mayor," as Oprah Winfrey called him at a memorial service at Yankee Stadium.

Kirtzman, a reporter for an all-news local cable TV channel, says the mayor, "one of the most polarizing political figures since Richard Nixon," has become "a healer, a father figure, cheered wherever he goes."

He revised the introduction and added a chapter. The rest of his book treats Giuliani less as a hero than as a gifted but flawed and self-righteous politician:

"He rose to the occasion during the crisis. He deserves all the credit he's gotten.

"But for all his immense talents, he can be ruthless and paranoid and immoral in his use of power."

About a week after the attacks, Kirtzman was told a paperback would be rushed into print. "I told them I had a whole new chapter. They said, 'You've got a week.' I said, 'That's all I need.' Three nights that week, I wrote until the sun came up."