Openly gay Massachusetts Representative
Barney Frank, a Democrat, will discuss the first authorized biography
about his life Tuesday.
The recently-released 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.
Frank will discuss the book at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst. The public event will join the
69-year-old politician and his biographer Stuart Weisberg in the
Student Union Ballroom.
Weisberg 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 threatened to end his political
career, and the representative's pragmatic approach to gay and
lesbian rights. The
book, however, generally stays clear from the politician's personal
life.
The free event is scheduled to begin at
11AM.