New book explores many roles of former N.Y. Gov. Mario Cuomo
Brooklyn BookBeat
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s life and accomplishments are part of the public record, but in “Mario Cuomo: Remembrances of a Remarkable Man,” published by Whitney Media, William O’Shaughnessy gives readers an exclusive and deeply personal, behind-the-scenes look at the liberal Democratic icon. This poignant memoir, based on the author’s 38-year friendship with Cuomo, portrays the spiritual journey of a man who played many roles: political leader, moral compass, orator, author, legal scholar and loving father and grandfather. He was, in O’Shaughnessy’s words, one of the most articulate and graceful public men of the twentieth century.
Their connection was unlikely: O’Shaughnessy, a self-styled “Rockefeller Republican” and one of the best-known broadcasters in the nation, and Cuomo “a failed baseball player with too many vowels in his name” who rose from the back of a grocery store in Queens to become a lawyer and then governor with a devotion to the writings of St. Thomas More, the teachings of Jesuit philosopher-paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, the vision of Abraham Lincoln and the ancient Hebrew concepts of Tzedakah and Tikkun Olam. Yet over the course of hundreds of radio interviews, letters, late-night and early-morning phone conversations, the governor and the Westchester broadcaster become fast friends.
Included in the book are previously unpublished excerpts from Cuomo’s speeches, including his 1986 speech at St. James Cathedral in Downtown Brooklyn in which he approached the pulpit, “as an old-fashioned Catholic who sins, regrets, struggles, gets confused and most of the time feels better after Confession.”