Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
The Prince of the City by Fred Siegel
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

The Prince of the City

Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life

$20.99

Retail price: $24.95

Discount: 15%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Brian Emerson

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 14 hours 24 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

In the dark days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Rudy Giuliani established himself as “America’s mayor.” This first post-9/11 account of his career shows how Giuliani’s successes in New York set a promising example for the rejuvenation of our major cities.

As one who has worked with him as well as studied him, Fred Siegel regards Giuliani as a shrewd tactician and artist of the possible, who could have stepped out of the pages of Machiavelli’s The Prince. A self-promoting, self-absorbed man, the mayor made his enormous ego and tribal ethos serve the city’s well-being, promoting ideals that transcended New York’s ethnic politics and business as usual. The Prince of the City is at once a fascinating character study, a history of New York over the last forty years, and a classic inquiry into the issue of how cities thrive or die.

Fred Siegel is a professor of history at The Cooper Union for Science and Art in New York City and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington. His book, The Future Once Happened Here: New York, DC, LA, and the Fate of America’s Big Cities, was named by Peter Jennings as one of the 100 most important books about the United States in the twentieth century. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife. He was assisted in this book by his son, Harry Siegel.

Brian Emerson is an actor and technical director with a long career in the Washington, DC, and Baltimore areas.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

“Professor Siegel is often extremely insightful and refreshingly evenhanded.”

“[An] important and timely book.”

The Prince of the City is a remarkable account of the Giuliani years by our best writer on urban affairs. Anyone interested in how the dead hand of ideology came near to crippling our largest city must read this book.”

“Siegel presents a positive but not uncritical opinion of the Giuliani record, which is of interest in itself but especially if Giuliani runs for president.”

Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting