JOHN V. LINDSAY: And the Silk Stocking Story

New York City's 17th Congressional District sprawls across Manhattan from below Greenwich Village to the edge of Harlem and west to include the theater area. Until the recent re-districting, it was smaller and more select with a constituency that had either money or social standing or both. The 17th has had a long history of Republican Congressmen, but Teddy Roosevelt has been the only Silk Stocking-er to make it big on the national elective scene. The author, a radio commentator and personal friend of the maverick Republican mayoralty hopeful, is in on the ground floor in this campaign/partisan biography of the high rising John V. Lindsay. The best part of the book is about the history of politics in the 17th. The rest is given over to making an attractive candidate seem even more attractive, with recitations of his previous election strategies and victories. Even Lindsay's critics do not expect him to stop after the mayoralty race and this factor may broaden the appeal of a book that has an initially local market.