The World of Mike Royko

by Doug Moe, Mike Ditka (Illustrator)

This illustrated biography is the first account of the colorful life of Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko, Pulitzer Prize winner, best-selling author, and legendary journalist who personified Chicago in all its rough-edged charm. Drawing on exclusive photos and interviews with Royko’s family and intimates, the book chronicles Royko’s rise from a “flat-above-a-tavern” youth—raised above a bar on Chicago’s Polish northwest side—to one of the best-known names in American journalism.
    Readers will get the inside scoop on Royko’s epic battles with Mayor Richard J. Daley and other politicians and his hilarious columns featuring “Slats Grobnik.” They’ll also meet a softer, largely unknown, side of Royko, through the love letters he sent to his wife-to-be from an Air Force base in Washington State.
    More than 100 photos—many never before available to the public—capture the man and his times. Millions of readers—in 800 newspapers around the world—followed Royko’s work and life. In The World of Mike Royko—he lives again.

Genres: Journalism

128 pages, Hardcover

First published October 20, 1999

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

There has been no newspaper columnist quite like Royko. Since he passed away in 1997, no one has replaced him. For me, he became important reading in the late 60s and through the 70s-- but I have to admit that I didn't follow him so faithfully in the 80s and 90s. Above all, to me, he represented Chicago--he WAS Chicago if you could distill a great metropolis down to one human being. In this 1999 book by Madison, WI journalist Doug Mo, we get a great overview of his life: his family background, growing up in a Chicago neighborhood (the Polish Northwest Side), doing his stint in the military and getting into the newspaper business--and so on. I knew a lot of the story, but not all that was presented by Moe. He drew upon letters and interviews with Mike's family, and along with the many photographs illustrating the book, brings the never-to-be-forgotten Mike Royko to life.