Mandery, Evan J.

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Mandery, Evan J.

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Harvard College, A.B.; Harvard Law School, J.D.

ADDRESSES: Home—128 W. 78th St., New York, NY 10024-6733. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Research director for mayoral campaign of Ruth Messinger, New York, NY, 1997; Shearman & Sterling, New York, NY, attorney; John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, assistant professor of criminal justice and law.

WRITINGS:

The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messenger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City, illustrated by Rob Shepperson and R. J. Matson, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1999, published as Eyes on City Hall: A Young Man's Education in New York Political Warfare, 2001.

Capital Punishment: A Balanced Examination, Jones & Bartlett Publishers (Sudbury, MA), 2004.

Contributor to Albany Law Review.

SIDELIGHTS: Evan J. Mandery, a former attorney and a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is the author of The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messenger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. In the work, Mandery chronicles the 1997 New York City mayoral race, which pitted incumbent Republican Rudy Giuliani against Democratic Party candidate Ruth Messenger, for whom Mandery served as research director. Messenger also faced a fierce challenge in the primary election from Reverend Al Sharpton, a boisterous preacher from Harlem. The 1997 campaign was a lively and memorable one, and Giuliani soundly defeated Messenger in the general election, earning a second term as New York's mayor.

The Campaign received mixed reviews. Noting that Mandery had virtually no previous campaign experience before he was hired by Messenger, Booklist critic Mary Carroll felt "his relative innocence lends an air of charming befuddlement … to his narrative of the campaign." Margaret Groarke, writing in City Limits, remarked, "Mandery is an entertaining critic of Rudy Giuliani's grammar and braggadocio, and he rightly criticizes the press for paying more attention to campaign strategies than platforms." Groarke added, however, that "Mandery would have far more to tell us if he had a little more experience and political smarts." A critic in Publishers Weekly offered a more positive assessment of the work, stating that "this incisive journal offers a candid and often darkly funny picture of the uneasy cohabitation of idealism and cynicism that defines political life."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 1999, Mary Carroll, review of The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messenger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City, p. 487.

Public Interest, spring, 2000, review of The Campaign, p. 88.

Publishers Weekly, November 1, 1999, review of The Campaign, p. 66.

Village Voice, December 7, 1999, Cynthia Cotts, review of The Campaign, p. 47.