OUR COMMUNITY
C
arl Levin, the longest-serving U.S. senator in
Michigan’s history, admits he had to be pushed into
writing his memoir, Getting to the Heart of the Matter:
My 36 Years in the Senate, recently released by Wayne State
University Press.
And we should be grateful to his wife, Barbara, and his
longtime aide Linda Gustitus for doing just that. Political
memoirs are often little more than self-satisfying ego trips;
I confess I fell asleep trying to make it through Bill Clinton’s
autobiography, and while better written, Barack Obama’s his-
tory of his presidential years may threaten to be longer than
the Talmud when finally finished.
Not this book. This is the story, in little more than 300
pages, of a good and decent man who never lost an election,
and about whom, after more than half a century in public
life, there has never been the slightest whiff of personal or
professional scandal.
You wouldn’t know from this book that he became the
only statewide candidate in Michigan history to get 3 mil-
lion votes. In fact, except for his first campaign, in which
he performed the difficult feat of knocking off a powerful
incumbent senator (Robert Griffin) and his second, when he
managed to survive the Reagan landslide, Levin barely men-
tions his elections; and the last two, not at all.
Nor is this a personal tell-all; what details of his early life
we get leave us wanting more. I had no idea that Levin was
once a motorcycle fiend who broke his kneecap and other-
wise smashed up his right leg crashing into a stone wall in
Florence, Italy, or that he worked the line in three auto plants
in Detroit and Highland Park.
Many readers also may be intrigued to know that his
paternal grandparents, Morris and Gittelle Levinson,
Carl Levin’s new memoir
chronicles his 36-year
Senate career.
The
Legacy
JACK LESSENBERRY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
12 | APRIL 1 • 2021
City Council days. Detroit, circa 1970.
COURTESY OF WSU PRESS
continued on page 14
ON THE COVER
Levin