Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century: A Biography

Boston Globe reporter Farrell's biography of Thomas P. ""Tip"" O'Neill (1912-1994) is much like the subject himself: large, rambling, sentimental and thoroughly fascinating. Farrell, a winner of a George Polk Award, traces O'Neill's career from its beginning in the 1930s in the rough-and-tumble world of Boston politics to his ascendancy to Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1977. O'Neill was often seen as a genial bear of a man, and Farrell shows that beneath this surface lay a complex personality built of equal parts insecurities and a sharp, pragmatic intellect. Yet O'Neill never wavered in his beliefs that ""all politics is local"" and that New Deal-style government programs could help the folks back in the district live better lives. O'Neill's career is, then, intertwined with the once basic Democratic ideal of activist government. Greatness came late in O'Neill's life, when as Speaker, he faced off against another genial Irish politician, Ronald Reagan. If Reagan sought to bring to a close the New Deal legacy, O'Neill sought to save it. And if the Reagan Revolution won, O'Neill, contends Farrell, softened its effects, made it less severe and more humane, and made himself a folk hero in the process. With wonderful detailDfrom describing ward politics in Boston to deal making in CongressDO'Neill's story is also the story of America in the past half-century, and the tale is thoroughly mesmerizing. Illus. not seen by PW. (Mar. 21) Forecast: While this tome is hefty, Farrell's highly accessible writing style and a continued fascination among the public with O'Neill should garner a large audience for this book, especially but not only in his home state of Massachusetts (the late congressman's 1987 memoir sold 360,000 copies).