Royko: A Life in Print

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Mike Royko pulled no punches. A hardnosed reporter with a keen sense of social justice and a murderous pen, he became, in Jimmy Breslins words, the best journalist of his time. Royko was by all accounts a difficult man, who would chew out his assistants every morning and retire to the Billy Goat Tavern every night. But his writing was magic. No one captured Chicago like Mike Royko. No one wrote with his honesty, his toughness, his passion, and his humor. In this, the first comprehensive biography of one of the most important Chicagoans of the century, Dick Ciccone, a longtime colleague and editor of Roykos at the Chicago Tribune, captures Royko at his best and at his worst. We see Royko sweating over columns minutes before deadline. We see him romancing his wife. We see him torturing his legmen. We see him barbequeing ribs and riffing on politicians. Mike Royko was the most widely read columnist in Chicago history. His column was syndicated in more than 600 newspapers across the country. With 7500 columns spanning four decades, Roykos writing reflects a radically changing America. Royko not only tells the story of one of Americas greatest newspapermen, but also explores the dramatic changes in journalism and in American society over the course of the twentieth century.

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