Royko in Love: Mike's Letters to Carol - Hardcover

Mike Royko (1932–97) worked as a daily columnist for the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune. His Pulitzer Prize–winning columns were syndicated in more than six hundred newspapers across the country. He is the author of Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago; One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko; For the Love of Mike: More of the Best of Mike Royko; and Early Royko: Up Against It in Chicago, the latter three published by the University of Chicago Press.

David Royko is the director of the Marriage and Family Counseling Service of the Circuit Court of Cook County. He is also the son of Mike and Carol Royko, and the author of Voices of Children of Divorce.

"Mike Royko wrote love letters to his readers every day, and maybe this is how he got started."

“Mike Royko's letters burn with the passion and obsession of the moment. It is a state older men remember as happiness because they would be so happy to feel anything that intensely again.”

“A book that will delight and surprise Royko fans.”

"The letters . . . are endearing and often funny, as they provide a glimpse into the mind and personality of young Mike [Royko]."—Library Journal

"A collection of warm, fervent love letters written by a man who later made a rather good living out of writing—though not about love. Mike Royko never shared his private life with his legion of newspaper readers, but they came to know him as a perceptive, chain-smoking, funny-but-fearless champion of the underclass, and a thorn in the side of the Chicago politicians he took delight in spearing. He became a celebrated syndicated columnist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, but the love letters written in 1954 to woo Carol, his childhood sweetheart, were likely the most important assignment of his life. He sure wrote like it was."

“Royko reached for his pen and went after Carol with a fever, displaying the same level of pursuit he would later employ in chasing bureaucrats and political hacks. . . . The Royko cadence was already locked in — simple, unadorned sentences that don't show the sweat behind them and are marked by a near-poetic lack of pretense. Even then, barely old enough to vote, he made it look effortless.”