Boss (book)

Author	Mike Royko
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	non-fiction
Publisher	E.P. Dutton & Co. (hardcover), Signet/New American Library (paper)
Publication date	1971
LC Class	79-133585

Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago is a 1971 non-fiction book by Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko, about six-term Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley (1902-1976) and the political machine and municipal government over which Daley presided.

Boss outlines Daley's Irish working-class origins and his step-by-step rise through the rough-and-tumble hierarchy of the Chicago Democratic party machine, until he was first elected mayor in 1955 and went on to become influential in national politics. The book describes patronage and political strong-arm tactics in vivid detail and contains stinging depictions of precinct captains, aldermen, bureaucrats, judges, the Chicago Police Department, and of Daley himself. The final chapters cover the turbulent 1960s, with civil rights unrest, violent confrontations between protesters and authorities, and the notorious, rowdy Chicago Democratic convention in 1968. The book concludes in 1970 with a determined, unrepentant Mayor Daley still in office.

Public and critical reception of Boss was solidly favorable and the book spent 26 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, from April 4 through September 26, 1971.

Writing in the The New York Times, Studs Terkel praised Royko as "Chicago's most incisive and impertinent journalist since Finley Peter Dunne" and added "only he could have written this book". Royko, said Terkel, writes with "a street wit, an elegant irony and a cool, though far from detached, indignation" to produce "a stunning portait" that "probes not only into the psyche of a neighborhood bully but into the nature of the city that has so honored him".