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

