The Prince of Providence

June 2, 2003
More than just a biography of Providence's first Italian-American mayor, once considered one of America's most vibrant young politicians, this exposé also captures Rhode Island's and Providence's turbulent political histories and their direct effect on Buddy Cianci, one of America's most successful and most notorious politicians. Rhode Island, a haven for outcasts and freethinkers, earned the "colonial reputation as 'Rogue's Isle,' a city of hustlers, gamblers and ward-heelers" that continued to be warranted well into the 1980s thanks to Providence being a home base of the American Mafia, an Irish-American Democratic political machine and a cast of dirty politicians. Presenting the complex civic and political environment in which Cianci rose to power, Stanton is able to showcase the mayor as both a product of his city as well as a new breed of Rhode Island politician. Stanton, using his skill as an investigative newspaper journalist, dissects every aspect of the mayor's upbringing, education, public and private lives. Outlining Cianci's virtues and vices—easygoing charmer and accused rapist, anticorruption candidate and king of the kickback, city revitalizer and public funds abuser—produces a colorful, nuanced portrait of the mayor. More than just the story of one politician's success and transgressions, Stanton's in-depth examination of Cianci is representative of the American political system as a whole, which at its best passionately serves the greater good and at its worst serves the whims and wants of a select few.

July 1, 2003
During his six-term reign as mayor of Providence, RI, Vincent "Buddy" Cianci displayed a leadership style that was a political stew of vision, corruption, and violence, says Stanton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Providence Journal. First elected in 1974, Cianci resigned ten years later, following a plea of no contest for beating the alleged lover of his ex-wife. The "Buddy II" era began in 1990 with his reelection and ended in 2002 with his conviction on racketeering conspiracy charges, for which he received a five-year prison sentence. Although "the Prince of Providence" led Providence through an urban renaissance, which earned international praise for this comeback city and popularity for Cianci, his empire teetered on a foundation of patronage, kickbacks, and bid rigging. Stanton is at his best when he recounts the actions of those who brought Cianci down and when he describes the antics of the mayor's foot soldiers, which showed that the bucks truly stopped at hizzoner's desk. Recommended for all public libraries and highly so for those in Rhode Island.-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2003
Journalist Stanton's dissection of Providence, Rhode Island, has a general resonance for urban affairs. That his vehicle is a flawed, flamboyant mayor makes it a colorful story in its own right, in which a good-government politician degenerates into graft with interludes in talk radio and, currently, jail. Vincent Cianci, known as "Buddy" around town, reveled in mayoral power, rewarding and punishing and positioning Providence as a city for concertgoers and tourists. Over time, the construction and rehabbing prompted complaints of corruption, and Stanton, an observer of Buddy from the offices of the" Providence Journal," here checks out the allegations in the course of reviewing Buddy's career from the early 1970s onward. Stanton unpacks the ethnic fiefs of Providence that background Buddy's trajectory: an Italian Republican in a heavily Irish and Democratic city, Cianci was a high-wire act with big appetites and resentments to match. A marvelous case study of the adage that all politics is local, Stanton spotlights the machinations and palm-greasing that the phrase implies.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)