Review of “Basic Brown: My Life and Our Times” by Former Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Tony Quinn
Co-editor
California Target Book

[Editor's Note: Former Speaker Willie Brown, whose book gets a Tony Quinn treatment below, is scheduled to discuss his book at the Crest Theater Feb. 19 in a conversation with his former staffer and now lobbyist Phil Isenberg. It should be a great show.]

Generally autobiographies of politicians are best left on the bookstore shelf, but that is not the case with Basic Brown, My Life and Our Times, by former Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown. [Published by Simon and Shuster, the book is scheduled for publication Feb. 5.] While excessively self laudatory, and not as introspective as one might like, nevertheless this book provides a rare look at the rise of an unusual politician from segregation in Texas to being the most powerful legislator in America.

The first 40 pages or so might have been left on the bookshelf; their purpose is largely to demonstrate he is the most brilliant politician he ever dealt with. But then Brown begins talking about his views on race and politics, and finally gets around to his own rise from poverty in Texas to style and power in San Francisco.

His treatise on race begins with an amusing story. He was in Atlanta in 1968 with white Assemblyman Bill Bagley and several black politicians, and Bagley had rented a car, which he was driving. They passed through the Atlanta black ghetto and Bagley asked why all the blacks on the street corners were staring at them. Brown answered, "Because they have never before seen a white man chauffeur four black men around."