"How'm I doin'?" he used to shout, cocksure that the crowds would reply on cue with the adulation he felt he deserved. Ed Koch was more than merely the mayor of New York City; he was the embodiment of the shining Big Apple: volatile and voluble, fast with a quip or a put-down, an ebullient practitioner of dukes-up chutzpah who liked to march at the head of every parade.
Koch rarely asks that question anymore. Midway through the third term he won in 1985 with a 76% landslide, the mayor appears battered and snappish as he struggles to maintain his uncertain...
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