John Lindsay was Mayor of New York during the most turbulent domestic times since the Civil War, from the Civil Rights Movement, to urban riots, to Vietnam War protests, to the rise of Women's Liberation and Gay Rights. Cities had seemed eerily quiet in the 1950s as the middle class fled to the suburbs. Now they burst into confrontation and turmoil, hastening their decline. Into this toxic mix walked John Lindsay, a tall, patrician Republican WASP,...