Year by year, under Mayors Wagner, Lindsay, and Beame, New York City had

been going downhill, landing in 1975 in the ignominy of bankruptcy. As WFB puts it in his introduction: "New York City is both unique--there is only one New York; we could hardly afford more--and representative: representative of the problems of many large American cities. . .. But, even as it surpasses them all in medical research, in opera and ballet, in public libraries and museums, New York City is the largest headache of them all." Mayor Koch had been in the saddle for almost two years by this point, and "he is controversial--and ubiquitous--and has restored great liveliness to his office." Which liveliness he brings to this show, whether defending the Federal Government's loan guarantees to New York or explaining how he gets to know his people: "I go around the City three days a week. I go on the weekends without reporters, without television cameras, because if you have a reporter or television camera the person you are talking to

is no longer a person. He or she is an actor."