For the Love of Mike: More of the Best of Mike Royko (Illinois)

In 1999, the University of Chicago Press published a collection of Mike Royko's columns, entitled __One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko__. The response was immediate and overwhelming—readers almost instantly began asking when the second volume of Royko columns would appear. With more than a hundred vintage Royko columns and a foreword by Roger Ebert, __For the Love of Mike__ was the answer. Royko, a nationally syndicated Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote for three major Chicago newspapers in the course of his 34 years as a daily columnist. Chosen from more than 7,000 columns, __For the Love of Mike__ brings back more than a hundred vintage Royko pieces-most of which have not appeared since their initial publication-for readers across the country to enjoy. This second collection includes Royko's riffs on the consequences of accepting a White House dinner invitation (not surprisingly, he turned it down); his explanation of the notorious Ex-Cub Factor in World Series play; and his befuddlement at a private screening of __Beyond the Valley of the Dolls__, to which he was invited by his pal Ebert, the screenplay's author. The new collection also illuminates Royko's favorite themes, topics he returned to again and again: his skewering of cultural trends, his love of Chicago, and his rage against injustice. By turns acerbic, hilarious, and deeply moving, Royko remains a writer of wit and passion who represents the best of urban journalism. "To read these columns again is to have Mike back again, nudging, chuckling, wincing, deflating pomposity, sticking up for the little guy, defending good ideas against small-minded people," writes Roger Ebert in his foreword to the book. __For the Love of Mike__ does indeed bring Mike back again, and until a Chicago newspaper takes up Ebert's suggestion that it begin reprinting each of Royko's columns, one a day, this collection will more than satisfy Royko's loyal readers.

You'll laugh. You'll cry. Royko's genius is pure Chicago.-Ann Landers

In 1999, the University of Chicago Press published a collection of Mike Royko's columns entitled One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko. The response was immediate and overwhelming-readers almost instantly began asking when a second volume of Royko's columns would appear. With more than a hundred vintage Royko columns and a foreword by Roger Ebert, this book is the answer.

Publishers Weekly

This is a substantial second collection (after One More Time) by the quintessential urban columnist as he witnessed the 1960s through the 1990s, preserving with a keen eye his obsessions, rages and lonely ethical crusades. Royko (author of Boss, an infamous critique of Chicago's late Mayor Richard Daley) embodies a journalistic archetype once synonymous with Chicago (cf. The Front Page), but now nearly extinct: chauvinistic and old-fashioned, yet fiercely imbued with a sense of time and place, and with courage enough, as Roger Ebert recalls in his warm foreword, to denounce the newspapers of Rupert Murdoch the new owner of Royko's own paper as not fit to wrap fish in. While Royko's subjects range widely, his moral stance and his well-honed rhetorical feints are rock-solid. Humorous columns like those featuring Slats Grobnik, Everyman of Royko's hardscrabble, white-ethnic neighborhood territory, or his legendary 1980 piece on pigeon eaters in Grant Park feel like grittier versions of folksy writers like Garrison Keillor. His serious, angrier pieces edge closer than most postwar writers dared in addressing the nihilistic darkness enveloping the cities, as in Nero Would Love Chicago, a 1975 piece acidly questioning police priorities during an arson epidemic. His pieces regarding the civil rights struggle where he examines Northern racial hypocrisy alongside Southern brutality remain sharp and poignant, and remind how groundless are charges of intolerance leveled against Royko late in life. Finally, his wry critiques of the Chicago machine and its time-honored traditions (when you buy somebody, they stay bought) make one miss his gadfly presence on the political scene, particularly his unerring eye for hypocrisy. Fans will treasure this collection. (Apr.) Forecast: Need we even say this will be a bestseller in Chicago? Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Back by popular demand, this collection of Mike Royko's columns, totalling over 100, is wide-ranging and substantial in its subject matter. Many people were shocked by the recent news report of the two baseball players who swapped their wives, their children-even their dogs.