Reason to Believe

by Mario Cuomo

Overview

The democratic party's most eloquent statesman in a triumph of heart, mind, and voice delivers a vivid rebuke to the radical Republicans running riot in Washington.

Forthright in confessing his party's own failings, Cuomo is remorseless in dismantling the opposition, using the floodlight of his clear prose to reveal the evasion and show the inadequacy of the now-famous, celebrated Contract with America. In its place, he offers a hopeful vision of what we the people might achieve if we can only learn to remember "we're all in this together."

Written with a depth of understanding drawn from twenty years of daily involvement with local, state and federal government and six decades as the American son of quintessential immigrants, Reason to Believe is Cuomo's tribute to the uncompromising wisdom of people like his parents and the parents of his wife, Matilda, seekers and believers who taught him the lesson America needs so badly now: "that what is right is usually also what is necessary; that in helping one another we almost always help ourselves."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476711737
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	11/13/2012
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Mario Cuomo is the former three-term governor of New York. He is now a partner in the law firm Willkie, Farr & Gallagher.

Editorial Reviews

Former New York Governor Cuomo offers a liberal rebuttal of the Contract with America, offering his own solutions to the nation's current ills. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Chartock (political science, SUNY-New Paltz) hosted a radio show for 12 years on which he interviewed New York's thenGovernor Mario Cuomo once a week discussing whatever issue on the state and national political scene he or the governor felt was worth pursuing. Quoting extensively from the radio dialogs, Chartock looks at the complexitiesand consistenciesin Cuomo's personality and political philosophies. Cuomo should be pleased with this very flattering book, for Chartock portrays the governor as a highly intelligent, insightful, and astute politician; a sensitive, devoted father and husband; and a concerned leader who feels a strong sense of civic responsibility. The governor is also strongly self-critical and always ready to laugh at himself. Cuomo, in his own highly readable and often entertaining book, shows he has been doing a lot more than munching corn chips since he left the governor's mansion. In an impassioned and articulate response to the Republicans' Contract with America, he labels the climate surrounding this Congress the "New Harshness." He characterizes Congressional Republicans as "Running Hard Backwards." And not just 60 years backward to the pre-New Deal days but to the era before the Constitution was framed. Cuomo chides GOP leaders for proposing a system that has been tried and failedone that champions individualism and state sovereignty. He eloquently explains how the progressive government movements that began in this century and evolved through the New Deal and postwar economic boom succeeded because people worked together to solve problems. While he admits to excesses and failures in the system, he decries the GOP reaction as throwing the baby out with the bath water and advocates compromise and coordinated approaches to solving our problems. Libraries in New York State will want Chartock's volume, while Cuomo's book is recommended for political collections across the country.Jill Ortner, SILS, SUNY at Buffalo

Library Journal

Readers unhappy with the Contract With/On America will welcome Cuomo's new book, in which the former three-term governor of New York offers readers an alternative vision of the nation's past and future, different diagnoses of our problems, and an eclectic collection of prescriptions for meeting these challenges. There's not much new or startling here: Cuomo credits his commonsensical central argument--that we're all in this together, that our past and future successes are based as much on community as on individualism--to his recently deceased immigrant mother. But Cuomo presents this time-honored argument more eloquently than just about anyone else with access to a large audience. He assesses the mistakes of Democrats as well as those of the neo-Darwinists who push what he labels the "New Harshness," and he critiques some Clinton programs along with GOP proposals. "Reason to Believe" won't convince conservative true believers that the free market can't do it all, but it's an encouraging, fact-and idea-filled manifesto with useful content for almost everyone else.

Mary Carroll