AMERICAN PHARAOH: Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation.

AMERICAN PHARAOH: Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor Little, Brown & Co., $26.95

WHEN NEW YORK CITY MAYOR Rudolph Giuliani was unable to detect a hint of imperfection among his trigger-happy police this year, he might have learned a lesson, as most mayors could, from Richard Joseph Daley. Facing charges of City Hall corruption in the 1960s, the mayor found solace in scripture. "Look at the Lord's disciples," Daley said. "One denied Him, one doubted Him, one betrayed Him. If Our Lord couldn't have perfection, how are you going to have it in city government?"

Daley was about as humble as Giuliani, but he knew the uses of humility. He knew when to play the religion card, the race card, the party card and anything else in his artfully-shuffled deck. He ruled Chicago from 1955 until his death in 1976, earning the title of American Pharaoh, which Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor bestow upon him.

Was he a bold builder? A fine family man? A bigoted bully? A cold, vengeful schemer? A loyal neighborhood guy? A visionary civic leader? A shrewd, cautious county chairman? An impetuous, impatient hack? The authors' answer: Yes.

They are fastidiously fair to the famous mayor and do not take sides. No edge and no attitude adorn this encyclopedic saga of the 50 wards. Like their subject, they take Chicago very seriously. To anyone interested in America or its cities, Chicago is fascinating. Art, commerce, political power, and race are part of the city's story, especially race, the dominant subplot of American Pharaoh.

When Martin Luther King Jr. came to Chicago in the 1960s, a theatrical showdown seemed inevitable, but Cohen and Taylor downplay the drama: "To King, Chicago was `the most segregated city in the North,' but to Daley it was simply a `city of neighborhoods.' What King viewed as Jim Crow-like segregation, Daley saw as the natural instinct of free people to stick with their own kind." Daley "co-opted" King, the book concludes, without saying whether that was good or bad.

The authors offer multiple choice answers to Daley's obsession with clean streets, particularly downtown. From 1955, their statistics, and his, are impressive: 40 new street sweepers; 10,000 tons of street dirt; and "the first installment of 7,000 new wire garbage baskets." Motivation? Sounding rather like the first page of Charles deGaulle's memoirs, an unnamed "Chicago journalist" suggested that the city was Daley's "`Our Lady of the Lake' ... and he would never stop building shrines and lighting candles for her." A more secular explanation came from Alderman Joseph Rostenkowski, father of the congressman, who advised the mayor, "Put the money where they can see it." Finally, Cohen and Taylor say that "Improved city service was also good politics in another way: It helped expand the patronage system?"

American Pharaoh is fast-paced, comprehensive, and written well enough to evoke the sights and sounds of a great city in turbulent times. But their subject was so notoriously combative that after any tentative judgment, he can be heard asking, as he did of all critics, "What's their program?," or, more lyrically, "What trees do they plant?"

Since Pericles hornswoggled the Athenians in 460 B.C., every mayor has promised to favor the neighborhoods over downtown. Cohen and Taylor fault Daley for favoring "the Loop over Garfield Park." But what was the alternative to Daleyism? They mention two other Great Lakes cities, Cleveland and Buffalo. Had Chicago's economy collapsed, what of the Midwest's or the nation's? A chapter on Daley's vision is "Make No Little Plans," the dictum of Daniel Burnham, the architect and planner whom Daley admired and quoted. Any city whose mayor can cite any architect is a healthy city.

Daley's faults were more obvious than his virtues. The mayor's mother, Lillian, was pleased when he lost a race for Cook County sheriff, thinking it not the job for her son. She was right. "Preserving Disorder," a chapter named for Daley's famously Freudian slip about his cops, documents how little he understood either law or order. The Daley-ordered "police riot" at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 was just what Senator Abraham Ribicoff called it, "Gestapo tactics on the streets in Chicago." As one who saw it and smelled it, I found myself for years savoring Daley's disrepute and that of the Democrats who groveled before him.

But now, with two successful sons, Chicago Mayor Richard and Secretary of Commerce William, the Daley legacy deserves to live long and prosper. Chicago will, I trust, honor his centenary in May of 2002. Reading American Pharaoh makes me urgently wish to be there and to raise a glass.

MARTIN F. NOLAN writes for The Boston Globe.