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books tagged “the new yorker”
books tagged “the new yorker”
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About the New Yorker and Me: A Sentimental Journalby E.J. KahnISBN 0399123008 (0-399-12300-8)
Hardcover, Putnam
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› Find signed collectible books: 'About the New Yorker and Me: A Sentimental Journal'Book summary:Celebrated "New Yorker" writer, E.J. Kahn, Jr. wrote a witty, literate, and marvelously entertaining memoir in 1979. A veteran writer, Kahn, Jr. has seen it all at "The New Yorker", one of NYC's major magazines. [via]
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About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Madeby Ben YagodaISBN 0306810239 (0-306-81023-9)
Softcover, Da Capo Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made'Book summary:"The New Yorker will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque."
This now-famous line first appeared in the prospectus Harold Ross wrote for a humor magazine he was hoping to start, and, in fact, epitomized the publication's early years. For, as contributing editor E.B. White once ruefully wrote in response to a query about what kind of submissions were wanted, "I myself have only the vaguest idea what sort of manuscripts The New Yorker wants. I have, however, a pretty clear idea of what it doesn't want."
Plenty of books have been written about The New Yorker over the years--many by people who were intimately connected with it. Ben Yagoda's About Town is the first, however, to concentrate on the magazine itself, rather than the personalities who shaped it. In his introduction Yagoda writes: "What I had in mind was a critical and cultural history. It would consider, first, the content of the magazine--how its original form came to be, and how and why it evolved over the years. Second, I would look at the role the New Yorker has played in American cultural life." Yagoda is as good as his word as he takes readers from the founding of the magazine in 1919 up until 1987, the year William Shawn was forcibly retired from his position as editor in chief. An epilogue covers the Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, and David Remnick years, but the author considers that with Shawn's departure, the curtain came down on The New Yorker as "a unique and influential institution in our culture."
Of course devotees of Harold Ross's brainchild could be expected to eat this book up, but About Town is more than just the story of how a magazine was made. Yagoda provides a window on a lost age--New York in the '20s, '30s, and '40s before the advent of television, when magazines and newspapers were at the center of the nation's cultural and intellectual life. He writes well, evoking the times, the people, and the places with such clarity that Harold Ross himself would have been pleased. And it is to Ross that Yagoda and the reader owe much of About Town, for it seems The New Yorker's founding editor kept meticulous records--as did those with whom he worked. When S.I. Newhouse took control of the magazine in 1985, its editorial files--all 2,500 archival boxes of them--ended up at the New York Public Library. Letters from editors to writers and vice versa, minutes from art meetings, memos, editorial queries, and marked-up manuscripts are the raw materials from which Yagoda shapes his story, and he tells it so well that it often reads like a novel. The section dealing with the magazine's decision to run John Hersey's Hiroshima in its entirety is positively gripping.
But perhaps the best thing about About Town--for those readers who, like Alice in Wonderland, demand pictures and conversations in their stories--is the plethora of memorable quotes (and even a few photographs) that bring to life The New Yorker in its heyday. Consider this letter from Vladimir Nabokov concerning a short story the magazine had bought:
A man called Ross started to "edit" it, and I wrote to Mrs. White telling her that I could not accept any of those ridiculous and exasperating alterations (odds and ends inserted in order to "link up" ideas and make them clear to the "average reader"). Nothing like it has ever happened to me in my life.
Or this snippet from Ross's letter to H.L. Mencken: "We have carried editing to a very high degree of fussiness here, probably to a point approaching the ultimate. I don't know how to get it under control."Lovers of The New Yorker can thank their stars that Harold Ross never did get his fussiness under control. And they can thank Ben Yagoda for writing this comprehensive and satisfying biography of one of America's most enduring literary institutions. --Alix Wilber [via]
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All aboard with E. M. Frimbo, World's Greatest Railroad Buffby Tony Hiss, Rogers E.M. Whitaker, Mark LivingstonISBN 1568361149 (1-56836-114-9)
Softcover, Kodansha Amer Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All Aboard With E.M. Frimbo: World's Greatest Railroad Buff'Book summary:Rogers E. M. Whitaker was a longtime reporter for the New Yorker, specializing in "Talk of the Town" pieces. He was also an expert on railroads, and spent most of his non-working time riding trains. Eventually he began contributing pieces about his rail journeys to the magazine, under the pseudonym "E. M. Frimbo." For decades his diligent reporting and sparkling prose glorified trains and destinations. In this collection, assembled by Whitaker's New Yorker colleague Tony Hiss, the reader is taken on rail trips throughout the United States as well as on excursions through Switzerland, Wales, and Siberia. [via]
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Annals of the Former Worldby John McPheeISBN 0374518734 (0-374-51873-4)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Annals of the Former World'Book summary:In 1978 New Yorker magazine staff writer John McPhee set out making notes for an ambitious project: a geological history of North America, centered, for the sake of convenience, on the 40th parallel, a history that encompasses billions of years. In 1981 he published the first of the four books that would come from his research: Basin and Range, a study of the mountainous lands between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas. Two years later came In Suspect Terrain, a grand overview of the Appalachian mountain system. In 1986 McPhee released Rising from the Plains, a history of the Rocky Mountains set largely in Wyoming. And in 1993 came Assembling California, a survey of the area geologists find to be a laboratory of volcanic and tectonic processes, a place where geology can be watched in the making. Annals of the Former World gathers these four volumes, which McPhee always conceived of as a whole, to make that epic of the Earth's formation; to it he adds a fifth book, Crossing the Craton, which introduces the continent's ancient core, underlying what is now Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska.
McPhee's great virtue as a journalist covering the sciences--and any other of the countless subjects he has taken on, for that matter--is his ability to distill and explain complex matters: here, for example, the processes of mineral deposition or of plate tectonics. He does so by allowing geologists to speak for themselves and an entertaining lot they are, those sometimes odd men and women who puzzle out the landscape for clues to its most ancient past. Annals of the Former World is a magisterial work of popular science for which geologists--and devotees of good writing--will be grateful. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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The Art of the New Yorker, 1925-1995by Lee LorenzISBN 0679765956 (0-679-76595-6)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraqby George PackerISBN 0374530556 (0-374-53055-6)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq'Book summary:As the death toll mounts in the Iraq War, Americans are agonizing over how the mess started and what to do now. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, joins the debate with his thoughtful book The Assassins' Gate. Packer describes himself as an ambivalent pro-war liberal "who supported a war [in Iraq] by about the same margin that the voting public had supported Al Gore." He never believed the argument that Iraq should be invaded because of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he saw the war as a way to get rid of Saddam Hussein and build democracy in Iraq, in the vein of the U.S. interventions in Haiti and Bosnia.
How did such lofty aims get so derailed? How did the U.S. get stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East? Packer traces the roots of the war back to a historic shift in U.S. policy that President Bush made immediately after 9/11. No longer would the U.S. be hamstrung by multilateralism or working through the UN. It would act unilaterally around the world--forging temporary coalitions with other nations where suitable--and defend its status as the sole superpower. But when it came to Iraq, even Bush administration officials were deeply divided. Packer takes readers inside the vicious bureaucratic warfare between the Pentagon and State Department that turned U.S. policy on Iraq into an incoherent mess. We see the consequences in the second half of The Assassins' Gate, which takes the reader to Iraq after the bombs have stopped dropping. Packer writes vividly about how the country deteriorated into chaos, with U.S. authorities in Iraq operating in crisis mode. The book fails to capture much of the debate about the war among Iraqis themselves--instead relying mostly on the views of one prominent Iraqi exile--but it is an insightful contribution to the debate about the decisions--and blunders--behind the war. --Alex Roslin [via]
More editions of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq:
- The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq: ISBN 078628451X (0-7862-8451-X)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr - The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq: ISBN 0374299633 (0-374-29963-3)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux - The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq: ISBN 0374530556 (0-374-53055-6)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq: ISBN 078628451X (0-7862-8451-X)
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Book of Ogden Nashby Ogden NashISBN 0848814398 (0-8488-1439-8)
Hardcover, Amereon Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Book of Ogden Nash'Book summary:Here, in one volume, are the most popular poems of one of the most popular poets of the twentieth century -- perhaps of the last twenty centuries. Delightfully nonsensical, they in fact make the best of sense, accomplishing what only real poetry can -- allowing the reader to discover what he didn't know he already knew or felt. [via]
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The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters With Extraordinary Peopleby Susan OrleanISBN 0375758631 (0-375-75863-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters With Extraordinary People'Book summary:Susan Orlean, New Yorker staff writer and author of The Orchid Thief, has always been drawn to the extraordinary in the ordinary, so when her Esquire editor asked her to profile the child actor Macaulay Culkin using the title "The American Man at Age Ten," she insisted instead on writing about a "typical" kid. The result--one of the 20 profiles drawn from magazines such as Esquire, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone for this collection--is a vivid window into the life of an ordinary and endearing boy from New Jersey who grapples with girls, environmental destruction, and the magical childhood landscape "that erodes from memory a little bit every day." Orlean has two tricks up her sleeve that make her profiles irresistible. First, she's got a mean hook. Take this lead: "Of all the guys who are standing around bus shelters in Manhattan dressed in nothing but their underpants, Marky Mark is undeniably the most polite." Second, she has an uncanny way of drawing her subjects. Bill Blass "is a virtuoso of the high-pitched eyebrow and the fortissimo gasp," while a boxer (the dog kind) wears "the earnest and slightly careworn expression of a small-town mayor."
Orlean is a New Yorker herself, and most of her subjects hail from the Big Apple, including such unique personas as a real estate broker who can describe the inside of almost any apartment in the city ("Walking down a Manhattan street with her is a paranormal experience"); Nat, the new tailor at Manhattan Valet; her hairdresser; the city's most popular clown; an Ashanti king who drives a taxi; and the owner of the only buttons-only store in America. The author is keenly observant and always tries to walk in her subject's shoes, even when it's a show dog ("If I were a bitch, I'd be in love with Biff Truesdale"). When she does tackle the rich and famous, she uses these same talents to create portraits so intimate and zesty they're unlike any other. Orlean writes that her only justification for choosing a story is that she cares about it, and it shows. Her fondness for her subjects rubs off as she draws us into the tight and exquisite focus of their mundane and fascinating lives. --Lesley Reed [via]
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Christmas at The New Yorkerby New Yorker, John UpdikeISBN 1400063418 (1-4000-6341-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Christmas at The New Yorker'Book summary:From the pages of Americas most influential magazine come eight decades of holiday cheerplus the occasional comical coal in the stockingin one incomparable collection. Sublime and ridiculous, sentimental and searing, Christmas at The New Yorker is a gift of great writing and drawing by literary legends and laugh-out-loud cartoonists.
Here are seasonal stories, poems, memoirs. and more, from a stellar roster of writers, including John Cheever, James Dickey, Richard Ford, Ken Kesey, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, S. J. Perelman, Adrienne Rich, and James Thurber. And it wouldnt be Christmasor The New Yorkerwithout dozens of covers and cartoons by Addams, Arno, Chast, and others, or the mischievous verse of Roger Angell, Calvin Trillin, and Ogden Nash ( Do you know Mrs. Millard Fillmore Revere? / On her calendar, Christmas comes three hundred and sixty-five times a year. )
From Jazz Age to New Age, E. B. White to Garrison Keillor, these works represent eighty years of wonderful keepsakes for Christmas, from The New Yorker to you. [via]More editions of Christmas at The New Yorker:
Citizen Newhouse : Portrait of a Media Merchantby Carol FelsenthalISBN 1888363878 (1-888363-87-8)
Hardcover, Seven Stories Press
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The Collected Dorothy Parkerby Dorothy ParkerISBN 0715606549 (0-7156-0654-9)
Hardcover, Duckworth
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Collected Dorothy Parker'Book summary:Dorothy Parker, more than any of her contemporaries, captured the spirit of her age in her writing. The decadent 1920S and 1930s in New York were a time of great experiment and daring for women. For the rich, life seemed a continual party, but the excesses took their emotional toll. With a biting wit and perceptive insight, Dorothy Parker examines the social mores of her day and exposes the darkness beneath the dazzle. Her own life exemplified this duality, for a while she was one of the most talked-about women of her day, she was also known as a "masochist whose passion for unhappiness knew no bounds". As philosopher Irwin Edman said, she was "a Sappho who could combine a heartbreak with a wisecrack". Her dissection of the jazz age in poetry and prose is collected in this volume along with articles and reviews. [via]
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Coming into the Countryby John A. McPheeISBN 0374522871 (0-374-52287-1)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Scienceby Atul GawandeISBN 0805063196 (0-8050-6319-6)
Hardcover, Metropolitan Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science'Book summary:Gently dismantling the myth of medical infallibility, Dr. Atul Gawande's Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science is essential reading for anyone involved in medicine--on either end of the stethoscope. Medical professionals make mistakes, learn on the job, and improvise much of their technique and self-confidence. Gawande's tales are humane and passionate reminders that doctors are people, too. His prose is thoughtful and deeply engaging, shifting from sometimes painful stories of suffering patients (including his own child) to intriguing suggestions for improving medicine with the same care he expresses in the surgical theater. Some of his ideas will make health care providers nervous or even angry, but his disarming style, confessional tone, and thoughtful arguments should win over most readers. Complications is a book with heart and an excellent bedside manner, celebrating rather than berating doctors for being merely human. --Rob Lightner [via]
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Coyote V. Acmeby Ian FrazierISBN 0374524912 (0-374-52491-2)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Earl of Louisianaby A. J. LieblingISBN 0807102032 (0-8071-0203-2)
Softcover, Louisiana State Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Earl of Louisiana'Book summary:In the summer of 1959, A. J. Liebling, veteran writer for the New Yorker, came to Louisiana to cover a series of bizarre events which began when Governor Earl K. Long was committed to a mental institution. Captivated by his subject, Liebling remained to write the fascinating yet tragic story of ?Uncle Earl?s? final year in politics. First published in 1961, The Earl of Louisiana recreates a stormy era of Louisiana politics and captures the style and personality of one of the most colorful and paradoxical figures in the state?s history.
This new edition of the work includes a foreword by T. Harry Williams, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Huey Long: A Biography. [via]
Essays of E.B. Whiteby E. B. WhiteISBN 0844671959 (0-8446-7195-9)
Hardcover, Peter Smith Pub Inc
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Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorkerby David Remnick, Henry FinderISBN 0375761276 (0-375-76127-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Fun of It: Stories from the Talk of the Townby Lillian RossISBN 0375756493 (0-375-75649-3)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fun of It: Stories from the Talk of the Town'Book summary:William Shawn once called The Talk of the Town the soul of the magazine. The section began in the first issue, in 1925. But it wasn't until a couple of years later, when E. B. White and James Thurber arrived, that the Talk of the Town story became what it is today: a precise piece of journalism that always gets the story and has a little fun along the way.
The Fun of It is the first anthology of Talk pieces that spans the magazine's life. Edited by Lillian Ross, the longtime Talk reporter and New Yorker staff writer, the book brings together pieces by the section's most original writers. Only in a collection of Talk stories will you find E. B. White visiting a potter's field; James Thurber following Gertrude Stein at Brentano's; Geoffrey Hellman with Cole Porter at the Waldorf Towers; A. J. Liebling on a book tour with Albert Camus; Maeve Brennan ventriloquizing the long-winded lady; John Updike navigating the passageways of midtown; Calvin Trillin marching on Washington in 1963; Jacqueline Onassis chatting with Cornell Capa; Ian Frazier at the Monster Truck and Mud Bog Fall Nationals; John McPhee in virgin forest; Mark Singer with sixth-graders adopting Hudson River striped bass; Adam Gopnik in Flatbush visiting the ìgrandest theatre devoted exclusively to the movies; Hendrik Hertzberg pinning down a Sulzberger on how the Times got colorized; George Plimpton on the tennis court with Boris Yeltsin; and Lillian Ross reporting good little stories for more than forty-five years. They and dozens of other Talk contributors provide an entertaining tour of the most famous section of the most famous magazine in the world. [via]More editions of The Fun of It: Stories from the Talk of the Town:
Funny Moneyby Mark SingerISBN 0618197273 (0-618-19727-3)
Softcover, Mariner Books
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Gone : The Last Days of the New Yorkerby Renata AdlerISBN 0684808161 (0-684-80816-1)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gone : The Last Days of the New Yorker'Book summary:Renata Adler's fulminating, fascinating defense and prosecution of her longtime employer The New Yorker may not be the best book ever written on the subject. Brendan Gill's Here at the New Yorker remains the classic, and Nancy Franklin's profile of Katharine White in Life Stories is more graceful and insightful. But Gone is without doubt the hottest (as ex-editor Tina Brown might say) chronicle of the magazine's history: a scathing portrait of a world with the mad logic of Alice's Wonderland and intrigues as viciously intricate as anything in le Carré.
Adler's narrative zooms like a speedboat through decade after decade of controversy. Still, Gone is essentially a heart-shredding account of the fall of a dynasty--that of longtime editor William Shawn, one of the century's crucial journalistic geniuses. "Mr. Shawn was the father," recalls Adler, "Lillian Ross, the mother. The son was Jonathan Schell; the spirit was J.D. Salinger. This family, it seemed to me, was ferociously judgmental." Yet nobody is more ferocious than the author herself, who was taken into the bosom of this family and stomps all its members to smithereens.
According to Adler, she was one of the lucky few invited into the circle of Mr. Shawn's biological clan, not to mention the parallel world of his mistress and "office wife" Lillian Ross. The author is quick to take Ross to task for her own trash-talking memoir of Shawn. Yet Adler is hardly a whit less destructive in Gone, although she wields the shiv with far greater literary skill. Indeed, those who still worship at the late editor's shrine will be shocked at her portrait of Shawn as a cruel despot who nurtured and destroyed talent according to meticulously articulated, infinitely arbitrary, altogether lunatic rules adjudicated by himself alone. Apparently he had three main responses to criticism: silence, lies, and high-handedness cloaked as high-mindedness. Adler rages at Shawn's hypocrisy, citing his refusal to give his son Wallace Shawn a job on the basis of the magazine's "No Nepotism rule." Not only was this rule nonexistent but the editor rubbed salt in the wound by hiring Schell instead, who happened to be the younger Shawn's college roommate.
Adler notes that the writers who bullied the conflict-averse Shawn tended to prosper, while those who revered him withered away, unpublished. Amazingly, she blames literature's loss of Salinger on Shawn: the ever-elusive author of The Catcher in the Rye "said that the reason he chose not to publish the material he had been working on was to spare Mr. Shawn the burden of having to read, and to decide whether to publish, Salinger writing about sex." Space, alas, prevents full comment on all of Adler's red-hot disclosures. Suffice it to say, however, that like a certain Truman Capote piece she insists on trashing, Adler's memoir of her office family is written in cold blood indeed. --Tim Appelo [via]
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Great Plainsby Ian FrazierISBN 0816149739 (0-8161-4973-9)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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Here at the New Yorkerby Brendan GillISBN 0306808102 (0-306-80810-2)
Softcover, Da Capo Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Here at the New Yorker'Book summary:Brendan Gill sold his first story to the New Yorker in 1936, when he was 21, and has worked there ever since. When his irreverent memoir appeared in 1975, it caused the most delightful of frissons, because the outside world then knew little about his workplace. Gill declares that "in the old Ross-Shawn days, what hadn't happened at the magazine was more worthy of note than what had." In reality, of course, a great deal was happening, and Gill seems to have heard and remembered it all. (This edition also contains a 1997 introduction, complete with acute and politic comments on the Bob Gottlieb and Tina Brown regimes.) But Here at the New Yorker is far from an exposé, consisting instead of the recollections of a lucky man who loves his work and many of his fellows.
Each reader will have his or her favorite anecdotes. Gill remembers taking the subway with Marianne Moore, who was squeezed next to two high school musicians. "Miss Moore stared with admiration at the drum, then said to the boy holding the drumsticks, 'Sonny, when the time comes, give it a big bang just for me.'" And, speaking of big bangs, the old New Yorker was far more squeamish--an organ in which bare nipples were nowhere to be found. Its first editor, Harold Ross, shown a cartoon complete with one such entity, growled: "Take that goddam tit up to Mrs. White and ask her what to do about it." His successor, William Shawn, shared his modesty though not his speech patterns. When Mr. Shawn asked the novelist Henry Green what led him to write Loving, Green's reply wasn't quite what he had expected. Alas, readers, you must turn to page 386 of this endlessly charming book for the offending response. [via]
Hiroshimaby John HerseyISBN 155504154X (1-55504-154-X)
Softcover, John Curley & Assoc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hiroshima'Book summary:When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could have anticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winning author John Hersey recorded the stories of Hiroshima residents shortly after the explosion and, in 1946, Hiroshima was published, giving the world first-hand accounts from people who had survived it. The words of Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamara, Father Kleinsorg, Dr. Sasaki, and the Reverend Tanimoto gave a face to the statistics that saturated the media and solicited an overwhelming public response. Whether you believe the bomb made the difference in the war or that it should never have been dropped, "Hiroshima" is a must read for all of us who live in the shadow of armed conflict. [via]
More editions of Hiroshima:
- Hiroshima: ISBN 1555041442 (1-55504-144-2)
Hardcover, John Curley & Assoc - Hiroshima: ISBN 0679721037 (0-679-72103-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc - Hiroshima: ISBN 0394548442 (0-394-54844-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - Hiroshima: ISBN 0881030252 (0-88103-025-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group - Hiroshima: ISBN 0553260588 (0-553-26058-8)
Softcover, Bantam Books - Hiroshima: ISBN 155504154X (1-55504-154-X)
Softcover, John Curley & Assoc
- Hiroshima: ISBN 1555041442 (1-55504-144-2)
I, Wabenzi: A Souvenir, Aporiaby Rafi ZaborISBN 9780374299 (978-037-429-9)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Joe Gould's Secretby Joseph MitchellISBN 0679601848 (0-679-60184-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writerby David RemnickISBN 0865477272 (0-86547-727-2)
Softcover, North Point Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer'Book summary:Abbott Joseph Liebling was one of the greatest of all New Yorker writers, a colorful figure who helped set the magazine's urbane tone and style. Just Enough Liebling gathers in one volume the vividest and most enjoyable of his pieces. Charles McGrath (in The New York Times Book Review) praised it as "a judicious sampling-a useful window on Liebling's vast body of writing and a reminder, to those lucky enough to have read him the first time around, of why he was so beloved." Today Liebling is best known as a celebrant of the "sweet science" of boxing, and as a "feeder" who ravishes the reader with his descriptions of food and wine. But as David Remnick observes in his fond and insightful introduction, Liebling is "boundlessly curious, a listener, a boulevardier, a man of appetites and sympathy"-and a writer who, with his great friend and colleague Joseph Mitchell, deftly traversed the boundaries between reporting and storytelling, between news and art.[via]More editions of Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer:
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Lanterns and Lances: Variety Encounters w/ Women Men Other chldr As Well As Some Less Confusing Creatby James ThurberISBN 1556112998 (1-55611-299-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lanterns and Lances: Variety Encounters w/ Women Men Other chldr As Well As Some Less Confusing Creat'Book summary:Humor [via]
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Letters from the Editor : The New Yorker's Harold Rossby Harold Wallace Ross, Thomas KunkelISBN 0375503978 (0-375-50397-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Letters of E. B. Whiteby E. B. WhiteISBN 0809590638 (0-8095-9063-8)
Hardcover, Wildside Pr
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Life Stories: Profiles from the New Yorkerby David RemnickISBN 0375757511 (0-375-75751-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life Stories: Profiles from the New Yorker'Book summary:Way back in 1926 the founding editor of The New Yorker suggested that the title Profiles be registered with the copyright bureau. Harold Ross had ample reason, for though he didn't invent the word itself, he certainly invested it with new significance. Over the years, New Yorker Profiles came to represent a new kind of biography: concise, well-researched, and impeccably written sketches of personalities who were often famous--but just as often not. Take for example "Mr. Hunter's Grave," Joseph Mitchell's 1956 Profile of George H. Hunter, the 87-year-old chairman of the board of trustees of the African Methodist church on Staten Island. This delightful piece leads off a select group of Profiles culled from The New Yorker's first 75 years and collected in Life Stories, edited by David Remnick. More a study of a place and a way of life than of a particular man, Mitchell's Profile stretched the parameters of the form.
The very next piece, Mark Singer's "Secrets of the Magus," is a prime example of what The New Yorker does best. In Ricky Jay, "perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive," Singer has hit on a quirky, eccentric, and fascinating subject--one that offers plenty of scope for writer and reader alike to dip into an arcane and little-known world of magicians, mountebanks, card handlers, and confidence men. Alva Johnston achieves similar success in "The Education of a Prince," his 1932 Profile of con man Harry F. Gerguson, who spent years masquerading as the lost Prince Michael Alexandrovitch Dmitry Obolensky Romanoff:
The Prince had a glittering career in New York, Boston, Newport, on Long Island, in high-caste settlements along the Hudson, and among the aristocracies of a dozen American cities. Twice he swept over Hollywood in a confetti shower of bad checks. He was repeatedly exposed, but exposure does not embarrass him greatly. He is widely admired today, not for his title but for his own sake. He has convinced a fairly large public that a good imposter is preferable to the average prince.
Of course The New Yorker covered plenty of household names, as well, and Life Stories contains sketches of such celebrities as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Johnny Carson, Richard Pryor and Marlon Brando. The arts are well represented by pieces on Ernest Hemingway, Anatole Broyard, and David Salle, and even the contributors are stellar, including such well-known scribes as Henry Louis Gates Jr., Truman Capote, and John McPhee.But where is that famous Profile of the sea by Rachel Carson, you ask? Pauline Kael's piece on Cary Grant or Janet Malcolm's controversial study of psychoanalyst Aaron Green? In his introduction Remnick acknowledges the many great Profiles that did not make it into this volume, explaining that he decided to publish pieces only in full. "I wanted the reader to get the real thing--no excerpts, no snippets," he writes. "As a result the reader will have to go elsewhere for a range of long or multipart Profiles." What's here is choice, though, and die-hard New Yorker aficionados who turn to the Profiles even before perusing the cartoons won't be disappointed by what they find. All in all, Life Stories makes a fine 75th anniversary bouquet for the magazine's many devoted readers. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin Americaby Alma GuillermoprietoISBN 0375725822 (0-375-72582-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Mr. Personality : Profiles and Talk Piecesby Mark SingerISBN 0394572106 (0-394-57210-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr. Personality : Profiles and Talk Pieces'Book summary:A superb collection, Mr. Personality brings together the best of Mark Singers profiles and Talk of the Town pieces from The New Yorker (19771989). In these thirty-three witty and offbeat pieces, Singer presents a slice of New York and its citizens in a way that only he can. From prolific filmmaker Errol Morris and a family of superintendents to one of the last great zipper-fixers, a court buff in Brooklyn, and Mr. Personality himself, these remarkable portraits offer something for every reader.[via]More editions of Mr. Personality : Profiles and Talk Pieces:
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My Crowdby Charles AddamsISBN 0671724401 (0-671-72440-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Crowd'Book summary:My Crowd is back by popular demand, just in time for the 20th aniversary of its first publication. With the most popular cartoons from his first six books, this cadaverous collection contains a wonderful assortment of goblins, ghosts, and gremlins, along with Addams' own famous "family" of characters that have made his name a household word. [via]
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My Crowd : The Original Addams Family and Other Ghoulish Creaturesby Charles AddamsISBN 0671778129 (0-671-77812-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Crowd : The Original Addams Family and Other Ghoulish Creatures'Book summary:My Crowd is back by popular demand, just in time for the 20th aniversary of its first publication. With the most popular cartoons from his first six books, this cadaverous collection contains a wonderful assortment of goblins, ghosts, and gremlins, along with Addams' own famous "family" of characters that have made his name a household word. [via]
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My Ears Are Bentby Joseph MitchellISBN 0375421033 (0-375-42103-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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My Kind Of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhereby Susan OrleanISBN 0812974875 (0-8129-7487-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Kind Of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere'Book summary:Susan Orlean has been called a national treasure by The Washington Post and a kind of latter-day Tocqueville by The New York Times Book Review. In addition to having written classic articles for The New Yorker, she was played, with some creative liberties, by Meryl Streep in her Golden Globe Awardwinning performance in the film Adaptation.
Now, in My Kind of Place, the real Susan Orlean takes readers on a series of remarkable journeys in this uniquely witty, sophisticated, and far-flung travel book. In this irresistible collection of adventures far and near, Orlean conducts a tour of the world via its subcultures, from the heart of the African music scene in Paris to the World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinoisand even into her own apartment, where she imagines a very famous houseguest taking advantage of her hospitality.
With Orlean as guide, lucky readers partake in all manner of armchair activity. They will climb Mt. Fuji and experience a hike most intrepid Japanese have never attempted; play ball with Cubas Little Leaguers, promising young athletes born in a country where baseball and politics are inextricably intertwined; trawl Icelandic waters with Keiko, everyones favorite whale as he tries to make it on his own; stay awhile in Midland, Texas, hometown of George W. Bush, a place where oil time is the only time that matters; explore the halls of a New York City school so troubled its known as Horror High ; and stalk caged tigers in Jackson, New Jersey, a suburban town with one of the highest concentrations of tigers per square mile anywhere in the world.
Vivid, humorous, unconventional, and incomparably entertaining, Susan Orleans writings for The New Yorker have delighted readers for over a decade. My Kind of Place is an inimitable treat by one of Americas premier literary journalists. [via]More editions of My Kind Of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere:
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A Neutral Corner: Boxing Essaysby A. J. Liebling, Fred Warner, James BarbourISBN 0865474958 (0-86547-495-8)
Softcover, North Point Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Neutral Corner: Boxing Essays'Book summary:Fifteen previously unpublished boxing pieces written between 1952 and 1963.[via]
Demonstrating A.J. Lieblings abiding passion for the sweet science of boxing, A Neutral Corner brings together fifteen previously unpublished pieces written between 1952 and 1963. Antic, clear-eyed, and wildly entertaining, these essays showcase a The New Yorker journalist at the top of his form. Here one relives the high drama of the classic Patterson-Johansson championship bout of 1959, and Lieblings early prescient portrayal of Cassius Clays style as a boxer and a poet is not to be missed.
Liebling always finds the human story that makes these essays appealing to aficionados of boxing and prose alike. Alive with a true fans reverence for the sport, yet balanced by a true skeptics disdain for sentiment, A Neutral Corner is an American treasure.More editions of A Neutral Corner: Boxing Essays:
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The New Yorker 75th Anniversary Cartoon Collectionby Robert MankoffISBN 067103555X (0-671-03555-X)
Hardcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Yorker 75th Anniversary Cartoon Collection'Book summary:This 75th anniversary collection pulls together a variety of cartoonists ranging from James Thurber and his ever-battling sexes to Bruce Eric Kaplan and his modern urbans. Readers who are put off by The New Yorker's reputation for stodginess may be pleasantly surprised: a city lot offers Extreme Parking, and one of George Booth's crotchety old ladies urges a silent ogler to "Whistle, you dumb bastard!" There are plenty of sight gags and silly puns (a worried buffalo complains about his cell phone's roaming charges), but don't expect to get through without picking up on a literary reference or two. Roz Chast revisits Eloise at the Plaza hotel at the age of 46 and chronicles the Dialogues of Plato over what to have for lunch. And of course no New Yorker collection would be complete without the sly ghoulishness of Charles Addams. The perfect book for anyone who has ever flipped through a copy of The New Yorker just for the cartoons. --Ali Davis [via]
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The New Yorker Book of Literary Cartoonsby Bob MankoffISBN 0671035584 (0-671-03558-4)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Yorker Book of Literary Cartoons'Book summary:Welcome to "The New Yorker Book of Literary Cartoons," a timeless tribute to the peerless power of the literary landscape. In 104 drawings, each of them certified by experts to be worth a thousand words (and some of them quite amusing), the essence of reading, writing, publishing, and shelving books is explored in all its glory and absurdity, from the stunning and sublime to the purple and pretentious. Here is Emma Bovary shrugging off those pesky bouts with existential boredom (on the tennis court), Dickens' fateful encounter with a martini (olive or twist?), and T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" thoughtfully rewritten for the Beavis and Butt-Head market ("April sucks"). Here is a long-awaited and wholly unprecedented comic takedown of that loftiest of all cultural arenas, the world of belles lettres. It is a world where books stamped with promises from Oprah stand alongside others arranged by the attention span they require, a world where the Bible can now be found in the self-help section. Here, finally, are dead-on portraits and eye-opening ruminations on all things bookish, writerly, and readerly, courtesy of "The New Yorker's" renowned stable of cartoonists, from Charles Barsotti to Roz Chast, Ed Koren to J.B. Handelsman, and Jack Ziegler to Victoria Roberts. In the bestselling tradition of such classics as "The New Yorker Book of Lawyer Cartoons" and "The New Yorker Book of Cat Cartoons -- THE NEW YORKER BOOK OF LITERARY CARTOONS" is manna straight from bookworm heaven. [via]
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The New Yorker Cartoon Album 1975-1985ISBN 0670509272 (0-670-50927-2)
Hardcover, Viking Press
Find This BookBook summary:THE BOOK HAS NO DUST JACKET AND THE COVER HAS WEAR.THE INSIDE IS IN VERY GOOD CONDITION [via]
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Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power, & Glory of America's Richest Media Empire & the Secretive Man Behind Itby Thomas MaierISBN 1555661912 (1-55566-191-2)
Softcover, Big Earth Pub
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No Hurry to Get Home: The Captivating Memoir of the Unconventional Life and Far-Flung Adventures of a Veteran New York Writerby Emily Hahn, Ken Cuthbertson, Sheila McGrathISBN 158005045X (1-58005-045-X)
Softcover, Seal Pr
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Paris to the Moonby Adam GopnikISBN 0375758232 (0-375-75823-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Paris to the Moon'Book summary:In 1995 Gopnik was offered the plush assignment of writing the "Paris Journals" for the New Yorker. He spent five years in Paris with his wife, Martha, and son, Luke, writing dispatches now collected here along with previously unpublished journal entries. A self-described "comic-sentimental essayist," Gopnik chose the romance of Paris in its particulars as his subject. Gopnik falls in unabashed love with what he calls Paris's commonplace civilization--the cafés, the little shops, the ancient carousel in the park, and the small, intricate experiences that happen in such settings. But Paris can also be a difficult city to love, particularly its pompous and abstract official culture with its parallel paper universe. The tension between these two sides of Paris and the country's general brooding over the decline of French dominance in the face of globalization (haute couture, cooking, and sex, as well as the economy, are running deficits) form the subtexts for these finely wrought and witty essays. With his emphasis on the micro in the macro, Gopnik describes trying to get a Thanksgiving turkey delivered during a general strike and his struggle to find an apartment during a government scandal over favoritism in housing allocations. The essays alternate between reports of national and local events and accounts of expatriate family life, with an emphasis on "the trinity of late-century bourgeois obsessions: children and cooking and spectator sports, including the spectator sport of shopping." Gopnik describes some truly delicious moments, from the rites of Parisian haute couture, to the "occupation" of a local brasserie in protest of its purchase by a restaurant tycoon, to the birth of his daughter with the aid of a doctor in black jeans and a black silk shirt, open at the front. Gopnik makes terrific use of his status as an observer on the fringes of fashionable society to draw some deft comparisons between Paris and New York ("It is as if all American appliances dreamed of being cars while all French appliances dreamed of being telephones") and do some incisive philosophizing on the nature of both. This is masterful reportage with a winning infusion of intelligence, intimacy, and charm. --Lesley Reed [via]
Paris Was Yesterday: 1925-1939by Janet FlannerISBN 0670539538 (0-670-53953-8)
Hardcover, Viking Press
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The Pocket Book of Ogden Nashby Ogden NashISBN 0671727893 (0-671-72789-3)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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The Pressby A. J. Liebling, Alexander CockburnISBN 0394748492 (0-394-74849-2)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Reporting Backby Lillian RossISBN 1582432864 (1-58243-286-4)
Softcover, Counterpoint
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Reporting Back: Notes on Journalismby Lillian RossISBN 1582431094 (1-58243-109-4)
Hardcover, Counterpoint
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism'Book summary:For half a century, Lillian Ross has been writing remarkable and timeless journalism for The New Yorker. Her spirited, funny, factual short stories in The Talk of the Town and her unforgettable profiles and other long pieces have won her a legion of admirers. Many credit The New Yorker for the inventive, reportorial breakthroughs that have come to be called literary journalism, and Ross has been an integral part of its traditions. Her books Picture and Portrait of Hemingway were recently listed as two of the Twentieth Century's 100 best works of journalism, and Hemingway himself called Picture "much better than most novels."
With panache, wit, and her own inimitable style, Lillian Ross discusses the questions of what makes a good reporter and what constitutes good journalism. Her years of practicing the art have provided her with much to say about these questions and nowhere is this in better evidence than in her own work-the pieces and profiles long recognized and admired for their freshness, originality, sharpness, humor, and truth. Excerpted here, along with her own commentary, are such classics as "Come In, Lassie!" her first, never before republished piece on Hollywood; her profiles of Francis Coppola, Robin Williams, Adlai Stevenson, John Huston, and Tommy Lee Jones; her two portraits of the Miss America contest-the first one published in 1949; the second fifty years later, and many others.
A primer on good writing, a tribute to the art of journalism, Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism is not only a casebook for writing, it is the unforgettable record of Lillian Ross's joy in the pursuit of excellence in reporting. [via]
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Sea Battles on Dry Land : Essaysby Harold BrodkeyISBN 0805060529 (0-8050-6052-9)
Hardcover, Holt & Company, Henry
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Show Peopleby Kenneth TynanISBN 0425047504 (0-425-04750-4)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group
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Show People: Profiles in Entertainmentby Kenneth TynanISBN 0671250124 (0-671-25012-4)
Hardcover, Simon and Schuster
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The Snow Leopardby Peter MatthiessenISBN 0553206516 (0-553-20651-6)
Softcover, Bantam Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Snow Leopard'Book summary:In the autumn of 1973, the writer Peter Matthiessen set out in the company of zoologist George Schaller on a hike that would take them 250 miles into the heart of the Himalayan region of Dolpo, "the last enclave of pure Tibetan culture on earth." Their voyage was in quest of one of the world's most elusive big cats, the snow leopard of high Asia, a creature so rarely spotted as to be nearly mythical; Schaller was one of only two Westerners known to have seen a snow leopard in the wild since 1950.
Published in 1978, The Snow Leopard is rightly regarded as a classic of modern nature writing. Guiding his readers through steep-walled canyons and over tall mountains, Matthiessen offers a narrative that is shot through with metaphor and mysticism, and his arduous search for the snow leopard becomes a vehicle for reflections on all manner of matters of life and death. In the process, The Snow Leopard evolves from an already exquisite book of natural history and travel into a grand, Buddhist-tinged parable of our search for meaning. By the end of their expedition, having seen wolves, foxes, rare mountain sheep, and other denizens of the Himalayas, and having seen many signs of the snow leopard but not the cat itself, Schaller muses, "We've seen so much, maybe it's better if there are some things that we don't see."
That sentiment, as well as the sense of wonder at the world's beauty that pervades Matthiessen's book, ought to inform any journey into the wild. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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Stories in an Almost Classical Modeby Harold BrodkeyISBN 0679724311 (0-679-72431-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stories in an Almost Classical Mode'Book summary:Eighteen stories, most of them novella-length, are collected here. They formthe basis of Brodkey's reputation as a great 20th-century American writer andspan three decades. [via]
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This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Deathby Harold BrodkeyISBN 0805055118 (0-8050-5511-8)
Softcover, Holt & Company, Henry
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› Find signed collectible books: 'This Wild Darkness : The Story of My Death'Book summary:It is possible not to care for Harold Brodkey's obsessive, digressive, almost plotless fiction and still be moved by this memoir of his last sufferings until his death, in mid-1996, of AIDS. Brodkey was a writer for whom style was everything, but in his own implacable and untimely mortality he found a subject before which style was nothing. In this assemblage of essays, journal entries, and brief notes, he confronts his illness from a clinical perspective without losing his ironic tone or his genius for minutiae. In a sense, Brodkey wrote nothing but autobiography throughout his career; this, then, is a fitting final chapter. [via]
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The Thurber Carnivalby James ThurberISBN 0394604741 (0-394-60474-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Thurber Carnival'Book summary:After the chuckles and amidst the chortles, the first-time reader of The Thurber Carnival is bound to utter a discreetly voiced "Huh?" Like Cracker Jacks, there are surprises inside James Thurber's delicious 1945 smorgasbord of essays, stories, and sketches. This festival is, surprises and all, a collection of earlier collections (mostly), including, among others, gems from My World--and Welcome to It, Let Your Mind Alone!, and The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze. Needless to say, there are also numerous cartoons that, by themselves, are worth the price of admission. While redoubling Thurber's deserved reputation as a laugh-out-loud humorist and teller-of-gentle-tales, it reintroduces him as a thinker-of-thoughts. To wit: his 1933 "Preface to a Life," in which he observes himself while discussing "writers of light pieces running from a thousand to two thousand words":
To call such persons "humorists," a loose-fitting and ugly word, is to miss the nature of their dilemma and the dilemma of their nature. The little wheels of their invention are set in motion by the damp hand of melancholy.
Enjoy the surprises, certainly, but revel in the candy-coated popcorn and peanuts. As in "More Alarms at Night," in which a teenaged Thurber intrudes upon his sleeping father, a skittish man named Charles, because he can't recall the name Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Coincidentally, his father has just been frightened half to death by Thurber's brother, who had earlier stalked into his room saying coldly, "Buck, your time has come.""Listen," I said. "Name some towns in New Jersey quick!" It must have been around three in the morning. Father got up, keeping the bed between him and me, and started to pull his trousers on. "Don't bother about dressing," I said. "Just name some towns in New Jersey." While he hastily pulled on his clothes--I remember he left his socks off and put his shoes on his bare feet--father began to name, in a shaky voice, various New Jersey cities. I can still see him reaching for his coat without taking his eyes off me. "Newark," he said, "Jersey City, Atlantic City, Elizabeth, Paterson, Passaic, Trenton, Jersey City, Trenton, Paterson--" "It has two names," I snapped. "Elizabeth and Paterson," he said.
Of course, things turn out fine, as well they should. And why not? The best of Thurber, which The Thurber Carnival arguably is, is sublime; surprising insight and wry observations tossed lightly and served constantly with effortless good humor and an obvious love for all things gently eccentric. --Michael Hudson [via] 
Travels With Aliceby Calvin TrillinISBN 0374526001 (0-374-52600-1)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Up in the Old Hotelby Joseph MitchellISBN 0679746315 (0-679-74631-5)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories'Book summary:Journalist Joseph Mitchell, whose death in in May 1996 at the age of 87 merited a half-page obituary in the New York Times, pioneered a style of journalism while crafting brilliant magazine pieces for the New Yorker from the 1930s to the early 1960s. Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of his best reporting, is a 700-page joy to read.
Mitchell lovingly chronicled the lives of odd New York characters. In the pages of Up In the Old Hotel, the reader passes through places such as McSorley's Old Ale House or the Fulton Fish Market that many observers might have found ordinary. But when experienced through Mitchell's gifted eye, the reader will see that these haunts of old New York possess poetry, beauty, and meaning. [via]
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Years With Rossby James ThurberISBN 0060959711 (0-06-095971-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Years With Ross'Book summary:At the helm of America's most influential literary magazine for more than half a century, Harold Ross introduced the country to a host of exciting talent, including Robert Benchley, Alexander Woolcott, Ogden Nash, Peter Arno, Charles Addams, and Dorothy Parker. But no one could have written about this irascible, eccentric genius more affectionately or more critically than James Thurber -- an American icon in his own right -- whose portrait of Ross captures not only a complex literary giant but a historic friendship and a glorious era as well. "If you get Ross down on paper," warned Wolcott Gibbs to Thurber," nobody will ever believe it." But readers of this unforgettable memoir will find that they do.
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