68.25
Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. New York: World, 24 October; simultaneously as a softcover: New York: New American Library; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, November or December, with different subtitle: An Informal History of the American Political Conventions of 1968. Nonfiction narrative, 223 pp., $5.95.
Dedication: “To my Father.” Nominated for the National Book Award in the history and biography category. Rpt: 68.27, 76.5, 98.7 (partial). See 68.18, 69.3, 72.7.
“ | . . . you end up writing best about those historic events which have a magnetic relation to your own ideas and tend to write less well about situations where that doesn’t occur. I think, for example, Miami and the Siege of Chicago is probably a better book than St. George and the Godfather.[1] For a number of reasons including the fact that the conventions themselves were more exciting, but also because there was a polarity in ’68 more congenial to me than in ’72. | ” |
— Mailer, 75.11 |
Bibliography
Reviews
- Buckley, Priscilla L. (February 11, 1969). "Seeing It like Mailer Does". National Review. pp. 129–130. Negative.
- Fremont-Smith, Eliot (October 28, 1968). "Family Report". New York Times. Positive.
- Fuller, Edmund (December 20, 1968). "Review of Miami and the Siege of Chicago". Wall Street Journal. p. 14. Positive.
- Richardson, Jack (May 8, 1969). "The Aesthetics of Norman Mailer". New York Review of Books. pp. 8–9. Positive. Rpt: Lucid (1971), Bloom (1986).
- Shaw, Peter (December 1968). "The Conventions, 1968". Commentary. pp. 93–96. Positive.
- Sheed, Wilfred (December 6, 1968). "Miami and the Siege of Chicago: A Review". New York Times Book Review. pp. 3, 56. Mixed.
Essays