The biography of Massachusetts
Representative Barney Frank is scheduled to be released Tuesday.
Barney Frank: The Story of America's
Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman was more than 5 years
in the making and is based on interviews with more than 150 people.
The book is the freshman effort of
attorney Stuart E. Weisberg, who served for 10 years as chief counsel
for the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Employment and
Housing.
“This is a biography of perhaps the
most fascinating and certainly the most entertaining political figure
in Washington,” Weisberg says in the book's preface.
Weisberg follows Frank from his humble
beginnings in working-class Bayonne, New Jersey to Harvard, where he
later returns to earn his law degree, and the halls of Congress.
His early political life in Boston –
as chief of staff to Mayor Kevin White – and his extraordinary 30
years in Washington politics are carefully dissected in the book's
voluminous 584 pages.
The book also discusses Frank's coming
out process, the gay sex scandal that nearly ended his career, and
the representative's pragmatic approach to gay and lesbian rights.
The
book, however, generally stays clear from the politician's personal
life.
Barney Frank: The Story of America's
Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman is available now for
preorder at Amazon.com.