SMAHTGUY LIFE & TIMES BARNEY FRANK

What are the odds that a disheveled, zaftig, closeted kid with the thickest of Jersey accents might wind up running Boston on behalf of a storied Irish Catholic political machine, drafting the nation\'s first gay rights laws, reforming Wall Street after the Great Recession, and finding love, after a lifetime assuming that he couldn\'t and wouldn\'t? In Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, America\'s first out member of Congress and gay and civil rights crusader for an era is confirmed as a hero of our age. But more than a biography of an indispensable LGBTQ pioneer, this funny, beautifully rendered, warts-and-all graphic account reveals the down-and-dirty inner workings of Boston and DC politics. As Frank\'s longtime staff counsel and press secretary, Eric Orner lends his first-hand perspective to this extraordinary work of history, paying tribute to the mighty striving of committed liberals to defend ordinary Americans from an assault on their shared society. (W/A) Eric Orner