Saladin Ambar's <em>American Cicero</em> weaves elements of biography, political history, and political theory into a novel interpretation of Cuomo's life and legacy. Tracing his life from the streets of an immigrant neighborhood in Queens to his final years in Albany, Ambar argues that Cuomo kept the spent embers of liberalism alive in an era when it seemed that conservatism was approaching full-spectrum dominance-even within the Democratic Party itself.
