Boss outlines Daley's Irish working-class origins and his step-by-step rise through the rough-and-tumble hierarchy of the Chicago Democratic party machine, until he was first elected mayor in 1955 and went on to become influential in national politics.

The book describes patronage and political strong-arm tactics in vivid detail and contains stinging depictions of precinct captains, aldermen, bureaucrats, judges, the Chicago Police Department, and of Daley himself.

Royko, said Terkel, writes with "a street wit, an elegant irony and a cool, though far from detached, indignation" to produce "a stunning portrait" that "probes not only into the psyche of a neighborhood bully but into the nature of the city that has so honored him".

[3] Publishers Weekly called Boss a "classic" that gives "a detailed and, for some, eye-opening account of Daley's rise to absolute control of the Chicago Democratic political machine", adding that it "provides sardonic and sometimes hilarious reading".

"Without either sentimentality or moralism, Royko traces the integuments of machine politics: key offices; the significance of each scandal; the way Daley has used his dual status as party chairman and mayor to consolidate a one-man rule any Soviet apparatchik would envy".