Reason to believe
(Book)

Includes index.

With the unmistakable fire that has lit up Democratic thinking for more than a decade, Mario Cuomo delivers in these pages a vivid rebuke to the radical Republicans running riot in Washington - and a clear-eyed, commonsense assessment of "where we are, where we're going, and what we should do about it." Forthright in confessing his party's own failings, Cuomo is relentless in dismantling the opposition, using the floodlight of his clear prose to reveal the evasion and show the inadequacy of the Contract with America. In its place he offers a hopeful vision of what we the people might achieve if we can only learn to remember that "we're all in this together." Those who feel Congress has swung dangerously rightward will find here both hope and ammunition. But the book is not for partisans only: all of us can benefit from Cuomo's plain-English explanations of the great social and economic challenges that dog America's present and define her future. Written with a depth of understanding drawn from twenty years of daily involvement with local, state, and federal government and six decades as the American son of quintessential immigrants, this book is, as Cuomo explains, in many ways a tribute to the extraordinary, uncompromising wisdom of people like his parents and the parents of his wife, Matilda, seekers and believers who taught him the lesson America needs so badly now: "that what is right is usually also what is necessary; that in helping one another we almost always help ourselves."