"In November 1999, an accidental death at a Brooklyn construction site made headlines because the developers had major fund-raising ties to the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But the dead man's name went all but unmentioned in the press coverage.".

"In The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez, Breslin not only gives the dead man a name but tells the story of his life: his birth in San Matias, Mexico, his love for a woman named Silvia, and his hope of making enough money in the United States to secure a more comfortable future back home in Mexico.".

"The story behind Gutierrez's death is one of corruption, bad politics, and indifference to people whose lives are perceived not to count. With the issue of Mexican immigration and border policy taking center stage in our national debate, Gutierrez's story takes on even more relevance. The account of his flight, his desperation in a foreign and hostile country, and his needless death at the hands of unscrupulous forces should be a wake-up call to us all.

In placing this man in the story's center, rather than its footnotes, Breslin does the same thing he did so famously when he interviewed the grave digger at John F. Kennedy's funeral: he wrenches our attention back to a story's most forgotten but most human perspective."--BOOK JACKET.