Willie Brown: A Biography [Paperback]

James Richardson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 1997

This is the first comprehensive biography of Willie Brown, one of California's most enduring and controversial politicians. Audacious, driven, talented--Brown has dominated California politics longer and more completely than any other public figure. James Richardson, a senior writer for The Sacramento Bee, takes us from Brown's childhood, through his years as Speaker of the State Assembly, to his election as San Francisco's mayor. Along the way we get a riveting, behind-the-scenes account of three decades of California politics.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1992, after returning from a meeting with Brown (formerly Speaker of California's state assembly and now the mayor of San Francisco), presidential candidate Bill Clinton noted that he had met "the real slick Willie." Brown is flashy (his suits generally cost $2500 and his cars run to Porsches and Jaguars) and ballsy (he answered charges of corruption by appearing in Godfather III taking campaign contributions from Mafia Don Michael Corleone), but most of all he is a consummate politician. Born in 1934 in Mineola, Tex. Brown came to California in 1951, where he got an education in law at Hastings College of the Law and a political education at local branches of the Young Democrats and the NAACP. In 1964, he was elected to the state assembly?the first African American legislator to represent San Francisco in that body. The next year, he rose to national prominence when friends appended his name to a telegram urging foreign leaders to prevent further escalation of the Vietnam war, making him, according to Richardson, "something of a founder of the antiwar movement, however accidental his involvement was." In 1980, he was made Speaker of the Assembly, a position he held until 1995 by juggling campaign contributions, committee assignments, offices, staff, parking spaces and personal favors to keep "at least forty-one of his eighty members happy at any given time." This is not a personal biography: Brown's wife and children appear only as counterpoints to his innumerable extramarital affairs. Nor does the author pay much attention to the larger cultural issues.(Richardson says of the Watts riots only, that "black leaders in California were galvanized by the 1965 Watts riot like no other single event.") What Richardson, a senior writer on the Sacramento Bee, does, and does well, is portray Brown as the archetypal political animal, astute, flexible and extraordinarily lucky. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Willie Brown, the current mayor of San Francisco, served as speaker of the California Assembly longer than anyone in the state's history (1980-95). Richardson, a senior writer for the Sacramento Bee, has written a biography of Brown that portrays him as a political pragmatist, a skilled negotiator, and a talented builder of legislative coalitions. Although a liberal African American Democrat, Brown on a number of occasions induced white Republican legislators to join his coalitions. Richardson's book, in combination with John Jacobs's excellent biography of Brown's mentor, former California Congressman Phillip Burton (A Rage for Justice: The Passion and Politics of Phillip Burton, LJ 8/95), provides a reasonably comprehensive overview of modern California politics. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.
Thomas H. Ferrell, Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (November 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520213157
• ISBN-13: 978-0520213159
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,244,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An insanely detailed overview of an amazing career, January 25, 1999

By 

Alexander Clemens (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Willie Brown: A Biography (Paperback)

Richardson has overlooked no musty archive, no potential interviewee, and no pesty detail in his amazing book about Assemblyman, Speaker, Speaker Emeritus, and now Mayor Brown. An essential read to understand Northern California and California politics from the seventies to the present day.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars left-leaning love letter to a fascinating political figure, August 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Willie Brown: A Biography (Hardcover)

Parts of the book are overly detailed, yet some parts are quite sparse. The portrait of Brown's hometown of Mineola, Texas is riveting yet there are few details of what Brown was like as a child -- readers wanting to find out what books, philosophers or anything that inspired Brown will be left wanting. We must settle for the unsupported statement that he was a voracious reader. Also, there seems to be a mismatch in focus -- over half of the book is devoted to Brown's career before becoming speaker when he really was a marginal figure. Perhaps a dozen pages are devoted to obscure delegate credentialling details about the '72 convention that could have been covered in a fraction of the space.

On the objective side, the book does call Brown to task for several ethical and race-baiting missteps, and he largely accepts the common view of Brown as a fixer extraordinare who made the trains run on time in the legislature at the expense of an agenda. The author also perceptively highlights why Brown succeeded tactically in holding his Speakership for so long, sometimes by pulling absolute political miracles. This is when the book is at its best, showing how Brown has become one of the most powerful, savvy figures in California political history.

On the minus side (for those who prefer their history unfiltered by the author's personal politics) references abound throughout the book to "ultra right conservatives", "hard right conservatives" and the like but there are no similiar references to figures on the left; Jesse Unruh and Ronald Reagan have "cronies" while Brown has friends.

While clearly critical on occasions, at other times the author blatantly bends over backwards to make Brown look good. When Brown made some vicious personal public remarks about then Governor Duekmajian (sp?) the author criticizes Brown yet excuses him by saying he was just doing so to satisfy the Democrat Assembly members who disliked the Duke, yet its impossible (for me at least) to believe Brown's Assembly delegation ever included people who demanded hateful comments from the Speaker. Throughout the book, Brown is portrayed as a consummate, off-the-cuff showman who's unmatched with his rapier-like comments, yet we're expected to believe this one was done calculatingly to satisfy people who insisted that Brown engage in brutal personal insults. This doesn't hold water.

The author also uncritically accepts Brown's assertion that he went to law school on a whim and says if he hadn't seized this seemingly random impulse, he never would have gone into politics. This seems a stretch to say the least, largely because the author paints a quite vivid picture of Brown the showman who lives for thie limelight -- it's virtually impossible to imagine this truly unique personality not in politics. That, and the fact that he was running for office by the time he was 28 indicate to me that like Bill Clinton, Willie Brown was intent on being a politician at an early age.

In the "give Willie the benefit of the doubt" category, outrageous remarks that can be fairly categorized as inciting violence are excused because Brown, according to the author, was so personally devastated by RFK's assissination a few weeks before. Yet the author provides nothing to support this strange assertion. It seems reasonable to conclude the author is going to extremes to excuse some of Brown's most inexcusable conduct.

At the end, the author drops all pretense of objectivity and discloses that he was a McGovern delegate at the '72 convention (which explains why, although doesn't justify, the excessive focus on that convention's minutae) and highlights Brown's greatest achievement as stymying the agendas of numerous Republican governors during his Assembly career.

The book was enjoyable largely because the subject is so fascinating. Parts of it are extremely well written, filled with strong analysis and the author undeniably did a tremendous job researching the book, but even more, in landing firsthand interviews with the major participants. Nonetheless, the book is unevenly focused, lavishing attention on Brown's flamboyance at the expense of personal insights. There is also a sometimes subtle but unmistakable bias from beginning to end in favor of Brown's leftist politics and Brown himself.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crisply written, meaty and intelligent, April 29, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Willie Brown: A Biography (Hardcover)

Jim Richardson not only tells us the compelling story of one of California's most dominant politicians, he also paints a portrait of California politics in the late 20th Century. Richardson's account is crisply written, intelligent and revealing. He uncovers raw history and presents anecdotes that transport the reader right into the backrooms and quiet corridors of power. "Willie Brown" is reminiscent of Robert Caro's treatment of Lyndon Baines Johnson, although Richardson's work is far less repetitive. The book is a must-read for people who want or need to know about the seminal issues of late-20th Century California -- and about the sometimes larger-than-life figures who shaped the debate and influenced policies