What Butch Remembered

THE MAKING OF AN INSURGENT (222 pp.)--Fiorello H. La Guardia--Lippin-cott ($2.75).

The Republican leader of the 25th New York County Assembly District stepped out of his office and bawled: "Who wants to run for Congress?" It really didn't matter: the candidate didn't have a chance. A chunky little (5 ft. 2 in.) lawyer piped up: "I do." Someone said: "Hey, La Guardia, what's your first name? . . . Fiorello? Oh, hell, let's get someone whose name we can spell."

That was in 1914. La Guardia ran and lost in a congressional district where no Republican had won since the party's founding. But he came back again to win the seat twice, to be Congressman from another district five times, and later to become New York City's mayor for a record-breaking twelve years. His posthumous autobiography, The Making of an Insurgent, plainly reflects the weariness he must have felt as he and Writer M. R. Werner knocked it together last year during the final months of La Guardia's fatal illness (cancer). It covers the first 37 years of his life (1882-1919), from the childhood on Army posts (his Italian immigrant father was a bandmaster) through his early congressional years.

Sketchy as the book is, drained of the color that made the Little Flower an endearing and irritating one-man kaleidoscope, it discloses a passion for public service. Some of his famed fractiousness comes through here, and so does his standard of political morality. He was willing to pick up flophouse votes with free coffee and doughnuts, but not willing to accept Hearst's offer to get him nominated for New York Supreme Court judge.

Jimmy Walker, a cynic in such matters, once quizzically asked La Guardia: "Fiorello, what are you in politics for, for love?" The Making of an Insurgent suggests that he was, in a way.

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