SMAHTGUY LIFE & TIMES BARNEY FRANK

What are the odds that a disheveled, zaftig, closeted kid with the thickest of Jersey accents might wind up running Boston on behalf of a storied Irish Catholic political machine, drafting the nation's first gay rights laws, reforming Wall Street after the Great Recession, and finding love, after a lifetime assuming that he couldn't and wouldn't? In Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, America's first out member of Congress and gay and civil rights crusader for an era is confirmed as a hero of our age. This funny, beautifully rendered, warts-and-all graphic account pays tribute to the striving of committed liberals to defend ordinary Americans from an assault on their shared society.