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The Best of Royko: The Tribune Years
For more than 30 years, Mike Royko was a part of the daily fabric of Chicagoans’ lives, penning often humorous and always honest columns first for the Chicago Daily News , then the Sun-Times , and finally the Tribune . Culled from thousands of his Tribune columns and edited by his son David Royko, this collection offers up his best material from the last stage in his career, which was cut short by his premature death in 1997.
416 pages, Hardcover
Published August 14, 2018
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About the author
Mike Royko
28 books49 followersPulitzer prize columnist, Mike Royko was nationally known for his caustic sarcasm. Over his 30 year career he wrote for three leading Chicago newspapers, "The Daily News", "The Sun-Times", and "The Chicago Tribune", and was nationally syndicated.
The Polish-Ukranian son of a cab driver, Royko grew up on Chicago's southside and never left the city. At age 64, he died in Chicago of complications arising from a brain aneurysm in the spring of 1997. Royko was survived by his wife, Judy, a 9-year-old son, Sam, and 4-year-old daughter, Kate, as well as two grown children from his first marriage. His first wife, Carol, died in 1979.
The Polish-Ukranian son of a cab driver, Royko grew up on Chicago's southside and never left the city. At age 64, he died in Chicago of complications arising from a brain aneurysm in the spring of 1997. Royko was survived by his wife, Judy, a 9-year-old son, Sam, and 4-year-old daughter, Kate, as well as two grown children from his first marriage. His first wife, Carol, died in 1979.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 10, 2021
As a lapsed Chicagoan, I’ve always considered Mike Royko to be the patron saint of everything my home city has at its marrow. A few years ago I read (and loved) Boss and ever since have wanted to read more of his work.
This volume was lent to me by an older Chicagoan, who pulled it off his bookshelf to search out Royko’s piece mocking the piss panic leading up to Wrigley Field’s first nighttime games. This guy read the article aloud to a group of us, two generations removed from its publication, all of whom were entertained for the duration. Such is the memorability and entertainment value of some of the morsels Royko serves up.
After sitting on my shelf for a few months, this book came in very handy during quarantine. It lived on my coffee table, next to a special spot on the couch, and it beckoned at every glimpse to come join it for three minutes of snark and wit. I had the perfect setting in which to read Royko: me living compressed in an apartment, every room a neighborhood, with this book there to deliver a shot of breezy observation every morning as the coffee kicked in. I felt like one of Royko’s Trib readers.
Reading a daily column is often a sad experience. I don’t think I’ve ever read a column by John Kass — putatively Royko’s replacement but nowhere near his wit and humanity — and nodded along. I think that’s what you’re supposed to do, is nod along. Usually I rolled my eyes at Kass and wondered why someone had this job. Like why it was necessary to have at all.
Royko does not leave you with any such questions. His writing bursts with an easy sagacity that does, in fact, help you understand the world. He articulates specific stances on political and social issues, and with an admirable frequency, they align with where our thinking ended up three decades later. Here are a few:
• He wants to end the drug war. “One of the reasons we study history is to learn from our own mistakes. Well, it looks like we didn’t learn anything from Prohibition.” (52), “A battlefield view of war on drugs.”
• Gun control is needed — and a losing battle thanks to a certain political lobbying group. “I’ve written about the need for effective gun laws on and off for about 25 years, going back to when it wasn’t a fashionable topic…. But since the top item on any politician’s agenda is to stay in office, few will cross the NRA.” Moreover, he points out that it's only when gun violence reaches wealthy places, where it's not supposed to, that people get outraged.
• Police brutality. He is not a fan. His take here is dated in style and tone, but his sympathies lie with where the modern liberal's lie: the disenfranchised who are tormented by unaccountable police; the economically and socially oppressed; the African-American.
• The oppression of black people and minorities. He features minority people as sympathetic main characters in his stories, and uses his everyman, simple style to convey a fundamental humanity.
An example of this last point that stuck out to me as powerful and compassionate — if not a matter of life or death — is an article that is not in this book. It’s his 1971 piece about Muhammad Ali changing his name from Cassius Clay. In the article, he wastes not one moment hemming and hawing about Islam or the draft or even racial politics. He only relays the long history of boxers and other athletes using nicknames of their own choosing, usually to Americanize, and builds toward an airtight conclusion that Ali should use whatever name he damn well pleases.
The common themes uniting all of Royko’s admirably stubborn politics — I mean this is supposed to be a glib, fluffy daily column here — are his marrow-deep advocacy for the little guy and mistrust of authority. And this is not just working-class theater. He keenly understands that racial minorities are among the downtrodden, and he presumes the mendacity and corruption of any kind of authority figure, cultural or political. No greater villain exists in his world than the alderman, and what is the president but a bigger, fatter alderman?
"... the Wall Street Journal, which always has its finger on the racing pulse of the world's fat cats." Brilliant. (291)
Of particular note is the last column he ever wrote. (Link) It’s about how his beloved Cubs’ “curse of the billy goat” was bullshit; the real curse that kept the team from winning for years was the owner’s racism that prevented him from signing black players.
One is tempted to view Royko as ahead of his time — as staking out bold positions that anticipated where our society was headed — but I think that’s exactly the wrong takeaway. The truth is, every issue we care about today has been stewing for decades with the same ingredients. Of course political observations from the recent past rhyme with our own thinking.
Royko’s main value to me was articulating views that are presently considered left-of-center with a simple, powerful, working-class rationality. No complex dialectics, no mental gymnastics, and therefore, no moral hedging. His relentless sarcasm gets a bit predictable, but I’ll take that any day over the high-context hand-wringing of the modern media personality.
This is not to say Royko’s public image was as a political commentator. That’s the aspect of his writing I latched onto the most, but his main value to the world, I suspect, was the wide ambit of his considerable wit. He was a smartass-at-large, with opinions in every corner of the world just like every average joe. In today's media environment of explainers and fashion scolds, it was refreshing to immerse with, not an emissary from the ruling class, but the cream of the working class.
In terms of the negative, his old-guy rants about Walkmans and shit are pretty boring. He liked playing the curmudgeon at this point in his career (late 80s to mid-90s) but these pieces age faster than his other observations, about bureaucrats and politicians and cultural norms. (One complaint did ring true: about the frustration of having to supply personal information just to complete a simple purchase when you have cash in hand. 250)
He’s better when being magnanimous or forgiving than when he’s sneering at something. Most of those haven’t aged all that well, but he’s always forgivable. They didn’t print the unforgivable stuff in this collection.
His incredible sense of place also bears mentioning. I wondered how he ended up getting syndicated in so many newspapers around the US when his column was about — hell, his column was — Chicago. But I think people like being transported to a specific setting and hearing its native worldview. Plus, of course, he had real perspective and humor. He’s always fun to read and makes it easy to get into his mindset.
We’ve lost a real asset in the street-smart mode of punditry. Royko was one of its best, but he’s gone, along with the entire idea of an urban media figure who comes from and speaks to the middle class. To be honest, for as much as I enjoyed his takes, this book really just made me sad that we never got a successor to the king.
This volume was lent to me by an older Chicagoan, who pulled it off his bookshelf to search out Royko’s piece mocking the piss panic leading up to Wrigley Field’s first nighttime games. This guy read the article aloud to a group of us, two generations removed from its publication, all of whom were entertained for the duration. Such is the memorability and entertainment value of some of the morsels Royko serves up.
After sitting on my shelf for a few months, this book came in very handy during quarantine. It lived on my coffee table, next to a special spot on the couch, and it beckoned at every glimpse to come join it for three minutes of snark and wit. I had the perfect setting in which to read Royko: me living compressed in an apartment, every room a neighborhood, with this book there to deliver a shot of breezy observation every morning as the coffee kicked in. I felt like one of Royko’s Trib readers.
Reading a daily column is often a sad experience. I don’t think I’ve ever read a column by John Kass — putatively Royko’s replacement but nowhere near his wit and humanity — and nodded along. I think that’s what you’re supposed to do, is nod along. Usually I rolled my eyes at Kass and wondered why someone had this job. Like why it was necessary to have at all.
Royko does not leave you with any such questions. His writing bursts with an easy sagacity that does, in fact, help you understand the world. He articulates specific stances on political and social issues, and with an admirable frequency, they align with where our thinking ended up three decades later. Here are a few:
• He wants to end the drug war. “One of the reasons we study history is to learn from our own mistakes. Well, it looks like we didn’t learn anything from Prohibition.” (52), “A battlefield view of war on drugs.”
• Gun control is needed — and a losing battle thanks to a certain political lobbying group. “I’ve written about the need for effective gun laws on and off for about 25 years, going back to when it wasn’t a fashionable topic…. But since the top item on any politician’s agenda is to stay in office, few will cross the NRA.” Moreover, he points out that it's only when gun violence reaches wealthy places, where it's not supposed to, that people get outraged.
• Police brutality. He is not a fan. His take here is dated in style and tone, but his sympathies lie with where the modern liberal's lie: the disenfranchised who are tormented by unaccountable police; the economically and socially oppressed; the African-American.
• The oppression of black people and minorities. He features minority people as sympathetic main characters in his stories, and uses his everyman, simple style to convey a fundamental humanity.
An example of this last point that stuck out to me as powerful and compassionate — if not a matter of life or death — is an article that is not in this book. It’s his 1971 piece about Muhammad Ali changing his name from Cassius Clay. In the article, he wastes not one moment hemming and hawing about Islam or the draft or even racial politics. He only relays the long history of boxers and other athletes using nicknames of their own choosing, usually to Americanize, and builds toward an airtight conclusion that Ali should use whatever name he damn well pleases.
The common themes uniting all of Royko’s admirably stubborn politics — I mean this is supposed to be a glib, fluffy daily column here — are his marrow-deep advocacy for the little guy and mistrust of authority. And this is not just working-class theater. He keenly understands that racial minorities are among the downtrodden, and he presumes the mendacity and corruption of any kind of authority figure, cultural or political. No greater villain exists in his world than the alderman, and what is the president but a bigger, fatter alderman?
"... the Wall Street Journal, which always has its finger on the racing pulse of the world's fat cats." Brilliant. (291)
Of particular note is the last column he ever wrote. (Link) It’s about how his beloved Cubs’ “curse of the billy goat” was bullshit; the real curse that kept the team from winning for years was the owner’s racism that prevented him from signing black players.
One is tempted to view Royko as ahead of his time — as staking out bold positions that anticipated where our society was headed — but I think that’s exactly the wrong takeaway. The truth is, every issue we care about today has been stewing for decades with the same ingredients. Of course political observations from the recent past rhyme with our own thinking.
Royko’s main value to me was articulating views that are presently considered left-of-center with a simple, powerful, working-class rationality. No complex dialectics, no mental gymnastics, and therefore, no moral hedging. His relentless sarcasm gets a bit predictable, but I’ll take that any day over the high-context hand-wringing of the modern media personality.
This is not to say Royko’s public image was as a political commentator. That’s the aspect of his writing I latched onto the most, but his main value to the world, I suspect, was the wide ambit of his considerable wit. He was a smartass-at-large, with opinions in every corner of the world just like every average joe. In today's media environment of explainers and fashion scolds, it was refreshing to immerse with, not an emissary from the ruling class, but the cream of the working class.
In terms of the negative, his old-guy rants about Walkmans and shit are pretty boring. He liked playing the curmudgeon at this point in his career (late 80s to mid-90s) but these pieces age faster than his other observations, about bureaucrats and politicians and cultural norms. (One complaint did ring true: about the frustration of having to supply personal information just to complete a simple purchase when you have cash in hand. 250)
He’s better when being magnanimous or forgiving than when he’s sneering at something. Most of those haven’t aged all that well, but he’s always forgivable. They didn’t print the unforgivable stuff in this collection.
His incredible sense of place also bears mentioning. I wondered how he ended up getting syndicated in so many newspapers around the US when his column was about — hell, his column was — Chicago. But I think people like being transported to a specific setting and hearing its native worldview. Plus, of course, he had real perspective and humor. He’s always fun to read and makes it easy to get into his mindset.
We’ve lost a real asset in the street-smart mode of punditry. Royko was one of its best, but he’s gone, along with the entire idea of an urban media figure who comes from and speaks to the middle class. To be honest, for as much as I enjoyed his takes, this book really just made me sad that we never got a successor to the king.
January 31, 2019
In 1997 the world, especially Chicago, lost journalist Mike Royko at age 64 from a brain aneurysm. His peers wanted to "be like Mike." He wrote over 8,000 columns. As a teenager, I was enthralled by his columns. As a high school teacher, I used some of his writings to teach wit, sarcasm, pun, effective leads, rhetorical sentence use, style, full-circle endings, tone, author's purpose, point-of-view, and other techniques. A master at work in 900 words per column. If one ever wants to grab a picture of Chicago life from the 60's through the 90's, Royko is your man. Or any type of life, for that matter.
His son, David, puts this collection together from the years he wrote for The Chicago Tribune.Topics are universal: food, politics, war, music, sports, humanity, family, toenail clipping, aldermen, suicide, Disney, dogs, flying, computers, Donald Trump, you name it. This fascinating collection has it all: humor (Try "A Word About Debate 'Poopery' "), criticism (Try "A Critical Look at Contact Lenses"), sympathy ("Try "These 7 Were Special People"), warmth (Try "A Lovely Couple, Bound With Love"). These only scratch the surface.
Royko had the splendid talent of pinpointing America's foibles with his own special tonics. It is a shame that many people today might never have heard of him. If that is you, here's your chance. He will make you laugh, tick you off, make you wonder, push up the lump in the throat, and make you think. What more might you want from writer? He is as current in his themes and ideas as anyone today.
His son, David, puts this collection together from the years he wrote for The Chicago Tribune.Topics are universal: food, politics, war, music, sports, humanity, family, toenail clipping, aldermen, suicide, Disney, dogs, flying, computers, Donald Trump, you name it. This fascinating collection has it all: humor (Try "A Word About Debate 'Poopery' "), criticism (Try "A Critical Look at Contact Lenses"), sympathy ("Try "These 7 Were Special People"), warmth (Try "A Lovely Couple, Bound With Love"). These only scratch the surface.
Royko had the splendid talent of pinpointing America's foibles with his own special tonics. It is a shame that many people today might never have heard of him. If that is you, here's your chance. He will make you laugh, tick you off, make you wonder, push up the lump in the throat, and make you think. What more might you want from writer? He is as current in his themes and ideas as anyone today.
February 23, 2019
A friend mentioned Royko recently, and I remembered how much I enjoyed reading his writing. That hasn't changed. Chapters in this book are organized by subject matter, which frees us from having to put the dates in some relational order. Thoroughly enjoyable. I've since mentioned this reimergence to other friends who are now hunting their own copies of this book. Open it anywhere and be amazed at his insight. Open it somewhere else and laugh out loud. Like a long welcome visit from an old, dear cranky friend.
December 6, 2018
Fascinating. Royko worked at the Trib from ‘84 to ‘97 (his premature death), having previously been at the Daily News then the Sun-Times. He left the Sun-Times when it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch. I lived in the city from ‘83 till late ‘98, and this book brings to mind so many noteworthy stories from that era.
December 31, 2018
A trip down memory lane. Journalists just dont write like this anymore
August 12, 2023
I had heard what a great write Mike Royko was and after reading this collection of his columns I understand why he is thought of so highly. His cynical wit defines his writing style and is balanced by a keen understanding of human nature. This book is a tribute to one of America’s legendary columnists.
January 19, 2024
It’s oddly the most human and simultaneously Chicagoan book I’ve read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews