The March 10, 2008, dis­clo­sure that Gov­er­nor Eliot Spitzer had patron­ized pros­ti­tutes from the Emper­ors Club VIP sex ring shocked New York­ers and his admir­ers around the world, who had cel­e­brat­ed Spitzer as the Sher­iff of Wall Street and a like­ly future and first Jew­ish Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. Iron­i­cal­ly, one man’s dis­il­lu­sion­ment with Spitzer had begun to dis­ap­pear 15 hours ear­li­er, when Spitzer con­fessed what the rest of the world would soon learn in a media storm of unprece­dent­ed inten­si­ty. For Lloyd Con­stan­tine, Spitzer’s Senior Advi­sor and long­time friend, the con­fes­sion explained the gov­er­nor’s recent­ly errat­ic behav­ior and marked the end of a plague year encom­pass­ing the trou­bled Spitzer admin­is­tra­tion and its flawed tran­si­tion to pow­er. Jour­nal of the Plague Year is Con­stan­ti­ne’s inti­mate account of the 17 calami­tous months pre­ced­ing the March 10 rev­e­la­tions and the futile 61-hour bat­tle waged by the author and the gov­er­nor’s wife to per­suade Spitzer not to resign but instead ful­fill promis­es made to the vot­ers who had elect­ed him in a record land­slide. The book con­cludes a month after Spitzer and Con­stan­tine resigned, as they con­front­ed their shat­tered careers. Peo­ple seek­ing infor­ma­tion about Spitzer and pros­ti­tutes will find none here. Instead, they will learn how the Spitzer regime suf­fered crip­pling set­backs after the gov­er­nor declared war with the leg­is­la­ture in his inau­gur­al address, includ­ing defeat over the choice of a comp­trol­ler, a pre­ma­ture effort to end Repub­li­can con­trol of the state sen­ate, capit­u­la­tion on a mediocre $122 bil­lion bud­get nego­ti­at­ed behind closed doors, the scan­dal called Troop­er­gate, and a con­tro­ver­sial plan to give dri­ver’s licens­es to ille­gal aliens, which sparked a nation­al debate affect­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Spitzer and his admin­is­tra­tion got their bear­ings at the begin­ning of 2008. How­ev­er, the March 2008 rev­e­la­tions and Spitzer’s refusal to fight for his job quick­ly end­ed his short and trag­ic reign.