WAUWATOSA, Wis – A new book written by Wauwatosa Mayor Dennis McBride comes out on Tuesday.
“A City on the Edge: Pandemic, Protest, and Polarization” is the story of how McBride and other mayors have guided America’s hometowns through a surge of personal and political divisions.
The unprecedented year of 2020 is the focus. McBride won the Wauwatosa mayoral race in April 2020 with nearly 60% of the vote. He was a new mayor in his hometown navigating the pandemic, protests over racial justice, a mass shooting at the mall, political division, and a high-stakes presidential race.
Mayor McBride joined Wisconsin’s Midday News for his first interview about the book.
“What happens here matters. It’s not just New York, it’s not just Los Angeles, Seattle, or Boston. We matter. And I think the book, I hope the book, illustrates that those forces that move America sometimes bubble up from places like Wauwatosa, Wisconsin,” McBride said.
The mayor pitched the book and sold it to Indiana University Press four years ago.
“The editor said we’re not going to publish it until 2025. He said, we want to do a five-year lookback,” McBride explained.
But like most authors, McBride was antsy for his book to come out sooner. He now says the wait was worth it and the book is better because of it.
“It’s going to be a year that we’re all going to look back on, historians and others, and say this was a watershed year. All those forces that were unleashed are still washing over us. We haven’t escaped 2020, and we won’t for a very long time,” McBride said.
The mayor got emotional when asked about parts of the book that reveal moments not previously made public.
“What a lot of people don’t know, as I said in the book, is what I told my three adult children. In 2020 I said, there’s a non-trivial chance that someone’s going to take a shot at me,” McBride told Wisconsin’s Midday News as his eyes welled up.
McBride also discussed the 40 nights he and his wife were barricaded inside their home with The People’s Revolution outside protesting.
“I was saying to (my wife) the other night, remember when we used to go into the back of our upstairs where our bigger TV is and we would turn the volume way up so we didn’t have to hear the chanting outside and see the people flashing lasers and strobe lights in our windows and throwing trash on our lawns. That was very, very hard on us,” he explained.
McBride’s wife hasn’t read his new book yet. He says, it’s too difficult for her to look back.
Former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is among those who got a look at the book ahead of time. He describes it as, “a must-read for anyone who wants to understand where America is headed.”
