The Maverick and the Machine

“We joke readily about the governors, politicians, and public figures who have been sent to jail or narrowly averted that fate, and it is easy to consign Dan Walker to the simple category of crook. He did indeed break the law and rightly went to jail for it, but his memoir reminds us that his life and career were about much more than that. Both the achievements and failures of that life and career need to be understood and taken into account in any fair-minded appraisal of the man, and this work, most assuredly, makes an important contribution to that understanding.”—Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society

“I've known other Illinois governors during the past fifty years, and none of them has written anything as self-revealing as The Maverick and the Machine. Former governor Walker bares his soul, extolling his virtues and confessing his weaknesses while laying out in vivid detail stages of a life with little parallel.”
—Taylor Pensoneau, coauthor of Dan Walker: The Glory and the Tragedy

“A story with a certain Greek tragedy to it, The Maverick and the Machine offers a rare insight into the inner workings of Illinois politics and government. If this were a script for a made-for-television movie, it would be improbable. The story, however, is all too real.”—John S. Jackson, former chancellor of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and visiting professor at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute