With the incisive pen of a newspaperman and the compassionate soul of a poet, Mike Royko was a Chicago institution who became, in Jimmy Breslin's words, "the best journalist of his time." Royko was by all accounts a difficult man, who would chew out his assistants every morning and retire to the Billy Goat Tavern every night. But his writing was magic. No one captured Chicago like Mike Royko. No one wrote with his honesty, his toughness, his passion, and his humor.

In this, the first comprehensive biography of one of the most important Chicagoans of the century, Dick Ciccone, a long-time...