Fire on the Prairie

Gary Rivlin is the author of five books, including Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. – How the Working Poor Became Big Business, and a former staff reporter for the New York Times, where his beats included Silicon Valley and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Wired, and Fortune, among other publications, and also the Chicago Reader, where he worked as a staff writer during the Harold Washington years.

Praise for the First Edition: "Colorfully, intimately, Fire on the Prairie shames and instructs as it entertains ...a civic conversation about race and power." The Washington Post Book World

• Foreword to the Revised Edition by Clarence Page Introduction to the Revised Edition by Larry Bennett - Forging Barack Obama: Harold Washington, Chicago, and the Politics of Race Acknowledgments Prologue BOOK I A Racial Thing, 1983 1 A Cry in the Wind 2 The Conspirators 3 The Chosen 4 The Catalyst 5 The Jesse Jackson Factor 6 The Family Business 7 The Liberal Apology 8 A Tower of Babble 9 A Racial Thing 10 Positively Antebellum 11 A City Divided BOOK II Council Wars, 1983-1986 12 The Biggest Bully in the Bar 13 Balancing Acts 14 Beirut on the Lake 15 Black Reform, White Reform 16 The Chicago Experiment 17 A Midterm Blunder 18 The Continuing Saga of Clarence McClain BOOK III Something Less Than Hate, 1986-1987 19 The Reckoning 20 Any White Will Do 21 Thy Kingdom at Hand 22 The Empire Strikes Back Note on Sources Index