My Father's Gun Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

My Father's Gun Book

The day-to-day reality of life as a police officer comes through with unglamorous clarity in this scrupulously honest memoir. Yes, the author recounts some exciting stories of cases cracked and perpetrators nailed. But in recounting three relatives' careers in the New York City Police Department, Brian McDonald spends considerable time delineating personal relationships (particularly with their strong-minded wives) and their progress (or lack of it) within a bureaucracy as hidebound as any other branch of the civil service. McDonald's grandfather refused to participate in Tammany Hall corruption, and as punishment was constantly reassigned for the next 14 years; his father burned out as commander of the toughest precinct in the South Bronx. And his brother's troubled trajectory reflected the turbulent atmosphere of the post-Knapp Commission department, held in low repute by law-abiding citizens as it grappled with an increasingly brazen criminal population. The author is candid about his ambivalent feelings toward his tight-lipped father and the ethos that sees a world "made up of only two camps--cops and bad guys," but grateful for Dad's gift of an Underwood typewriter, which led him to journalism. McDonald's gift in return is a book that portrays policemen neither as heroes nor villains, but as recognizable human beings. --Wendy Smith Read More

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  • Product Description

    In this powerful memoir about three generations of New York City policemen, Brian McDonald chronicles a hundred years of dedication, disillusion, heroism, and tragedy behind the blue wall of silence that separates a cop from the rest of the world. His grandfather, Thomas Skelly, entered the department in 1893, when the NYPD was little more than a brutal gang of organized enforcers and Tammany Hall a corrupt political machine that could make or break an honest cop's career. His father Frank's career would span World War II through the 1960s, taking him from street cop to squad commander of the Forty-first Precinct. Better known as "Fort Apache," it was a place from which few cops emerged whole. His brother Frank McDonald, Jr., went on to become a decorated officer, waging an undercover war on drugs and crime. From turn-of-the-century Brooklyn to the South Bronx in the 1970s to the bedroom communities of upstate New York, My Father's Gun combines a rare and intimate family story with turbulent social history.

    "A dramatic memoir of three generations of Irish American police officers . . . Haunting." --The New York Times Book Review

    "A rich and riveting narrative . . . Nuanced, colorful, frank, free of all the usual cop clichs." --Newsday

  • 0452279240
  • 9780452279247
  • Brian McDonald
  • 25 May 2000
  • New American Library
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 320
  • Reissue
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