Gay Talese's Books

High Notes

Selected Writings of Gay Talese

By: Gay Talese

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High Notes

Selected Writings of Gay Talese

By: Gay Talese

A selection of classic high points in the illustrious career of Gay Talese. “[High Notes] reminds us of the indefatigable reporting skills and inventive use of language that made Talese a paragon of the New Journalism.” -New York Times Book Review Admired by generations of reporters, Gay Talese has for more than six decades enriched American journalism with an unmatched ability to inhabit the worlds of his subjects. From the article that germinated into Thy Neighbor's Wife, to indelible portraits of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Lady Gaga, High Notes selects the highlights of Talese's signature mode, “the art of hanging out.” It's a bold testament to enduring literary craftsmanship and unparalleled cultural observation from "the most important nonfiction writer of his generation" (David Halberstam).

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Page Count

289

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1632867478

ISBN 13

9781632867476

The Gay Talese Reader

Portraits and Encounters

By: Gay Talese

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The Gay Talese Reader

Portraits and Encounters

By: Gay Talese

As a young reporter for The New York Times, in 1961 Gay Talese published his first book, New York-A Serendipiter's Journey, a series of vignettes and essays that began, "New York is a city of things unnoticed. It is a city with cats sleeping under parked cars, two stone armadillos crawling up St. Patrick's Cathedral, and thousands of ants creeping on top of the Empire State Building." Attention to detail and observation of the unnoticed is the hallmark of Gay Talese's writing, and The Gay Talese Reader brings together the best of his essays and classic profiles. This collection opens with "New York Is a City of Things Unnoticed," and includes "Silent Season of a Hero" (about Joe DiMaggio), "Ali in Havana," and "Looking for Hemingway" as well as several other favorite pieces. It also features a previously unpublished article on the infamous case of Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt, and concludes with the autobiographical pieces that are among Talese's finest writings. These works give insight into the progression of a writer at the pinnacle of his craft. Whether he is detailing the unseen and sometimes quirky world of New York City or profiling Ol' Blue Eyes in "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," Talese captures his subjects-be they famous, infamous, or merely unusual-in his own inimitable, elegant fashion. The essays and profiles collected in The Gay Talese Reader are works of art, each carefully crafted to create a portrait of an unforgettable individual, place or moment.

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Page Count

286

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802719155

ISBN 13

9780802719157

Bartleby and Me

Reflections of an Old Scrivener

By: Gay Talese

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Bartleby and Me

Reflections of an Old Scrivener

By: Gay Talese

“Literary Legend” (New York) Gay Talese retraces his pioneering career, marked by his fascination with the world's hidden characters. In the concluding act of this "incomparable" (Air Mail) capstone book, Talese introduces readers to one final unforgettable story: the strange and riveting all new tale of Dr. Nicholas Bartha, who blew up his Manhattan brownstone—and himself—rather than relinquish his claim to the American dream. “New York is a city of things unnoticed,” a young reporter named Gay Talese wrote sixty years ago. He would spend the rest of his legendary career defying that statement by celebrating the people most reporters overlooked, understanding that it was through these minor characters that the epic story of New York and America unfolded. Inspired by Herman Melville’s great short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Talese now revisits the unforgettable “nobodies” he has profiled in his celebrated career—from the New York Times’s anonymous obituary writer to Frank Sinatra’s entourage. In the book’s final act, a remarkable piece of original reporting titled “Dr. Bartha’s Brownstone,” Talese presents a new “Bartleby,” an unknown doctor who made his mark on the city one summer day in 2006. Rising within the city of New York are about one million buildings. These include skyscrapers, apartment buildings, bodegas, schools, churches, and homeless shelters. Also spread through the city are more than 19,000 vacant lots, one of which suddenly appeared some years ago—at 34 East 62nd Street, between Madison and Park Avenues—when the unhappy owner of a brownstone at that address blew it up (with himself in it) rather than sell his cherished nineteenth-century high-stoop Neo-Grecian residence in order to pay the court-ordered sum of $4 million to the woman who had divorced him three years earlier. This man was a physician of sixty-six named Nicholas Bartha. On the morning of July 10, 2006, Dr. Bartha filled his building with gas that he had diverted from a pipe in the basement, and then he set off an explosion that reduced the fivestory premises into a fiery heap that would injure ten firefighters and five passersby and damage the interiors of thirteen apartments that stood to the west of the crumbled brownstone. Talese has been obsessed with Dr. Bartha’s story and spent the last seventeen years examining this single 20 x 100 foot New York City building lot, its serpentine past, and the unexpected triumphs and disasters encountered by its residents and owners—an unlikely cast featuring society wannabes, striving immigrants, Gilded Age powerbrokers, Russian financiers, and even a turncoat during the War of Independence—just as he has been obsessed with similar “nobodies” throughout his career. Concise, elegant, tragic, and whimsical, Bartleby and Me is the valedictory work of a master journalist.

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311

Publisher

HarperCollins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0358447771

ISBN 13

9780358447771

A Writer's Life

By: Gay Talese

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A Writer's Life

By: Gay Talese

The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay between experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for the truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism and best-sellerdom and acclaim for his revelatory books about The New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power), the Mafia (Honor Thy Father), the sex industry (Thy Neighbor’s Wife), and, focusing on his own family, the American immigrant experience (Unto the Sons). How has Talese found his subjects? What has stimulated, blocked, or inspired his writing? Here are his amateur beginnings on his college newspaper; his professional climb at The New York Times; his desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him to magazine writing at Esquire and then to books. We see his involvement with issues of race from his student days in the Deep South to a recent interracial wedding in Selma, Alabama, where he once covered the fierce struggle for civil rights. Here are his reflections on the changing American sexual mores he has written about over the last fifty years, and a striking look at the lives—and their meaning—of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He takes us behind the scenes of his legendary profile of Frank Sinatra, his writings about Joe DiMaggio and heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, and his interview with the head of a Mafia family.But he is at his most poignant in talking about the ordinary men and women whose stories led to his most memorable work. In remarkable fashion, he traces the history of a single restaurant location in New York, creating an ethnic mosaic of one restaurateur after the other whose dreams were dashed while a successor’s were born. And as he delves into the life of a young female Chinese soccer player, we see his consuming interest in the world in its latest manifestation.In these and other recollections and stories, Talese gives us a fascinating picture of both the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story. He makes clear that every one of us represents a good one, if a writer has the curiosity to know it, the diligence to pursue it, and the desire to get it right.Candid, humorous, deeply impassioned—a dazzling book about the nature of writing in one man’s life, and of writing itself.

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Page Count

450

Publisher

Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812977289

ISBN 13

9780812977288

The Silent Season of a Hero

The Sports Writing of Gay Talese

By: Gay Talese

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The Silent Season of a Hero

The Sports Writing of Gay Talese

By: Gay Talese

One of America's most acclaimed writers and journalists, Gay Talese has been fascinated by sports throughout his life. At age fifteen he became a sports reporter for his Ocean City High School newspaper; four years later, as sports editor of the University of Alabama's Crimson-White, he began to employ devices more common in fiction, such as establishing a "scene" with minute details-a technique that would later make him famous. Later, as a sports reporter for the New York Times, Talese was drawn to individuals at poignant and vulnerable moments rather than to the spectacle of sports. Boxing held special appeal, and his Esquire pieces on Joe Louis and Floyd Patterson in decline won praise, as would his later essay "Ali in Havana," chronicling Muhammad Ali's visit to Fidel Castro. His profile of Joe DiMaggio, "The Silent Season of a Hero," perfectly captured the great player in his remote retirement, and displayed Talese's journalistic brilliance, for it grew out of his on-the-ground observation of the Yankee Clipper rather than from any interview. More recently, Talese traveled to China to track down and chronicle the female soccer player who missed a penalty kick that would have won China the World Cup. Chronicling Talese's writing over more than six decades, from high school and college columns to his signature adult journalism- and including several never-before-published pieces (such as one on sports anthropology), a new introduction by the author, and notes on the background of each piece-The Silent Season of a Hero is a unique and indispensable collection for sports fans and those who enjoy the heights of journalism.

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Page Count

318

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802778399

ISBN 13

9780802778390

The Kingdom and the Power

Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World

By: Gay Talese

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The Kingdom and the Power

Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World

By: Gay Talese

“Beautifully documented . . . no less than a landmark in the field of writing and journalism.”—The Nation “Fascinating . . . Seldom has anyone been so successful in making a newspaper come alive as a human institution.”—The New York Times In this century and the last, most of history's important news stories have been broken to a waiting nation by The New York Times. In The Kingdom and the Power, former Times correspondent and bestselling author Gay Talese lays bare the secret internal intrigues at the daily, revealing the stories behind the personalities, rivalries, and scopes at the most influential paper in the world. In gripping detail, Talese examines the private and public lives of the famed Ochs family, along with their direct descendants, the Sulzbergers, and their hobnobbing with presidents, kings, ambassadors, and cabinet members; the vicious struggles for power and control at the paper; and the amazing story of how a bankrupt newspaper turned itself around and grew to Olympian heights. Regarded as a classic piece of journalism, The Kingdom and the Power is as gripping as a work of fiction and as relevant as today's headlines. Praise for The Kingdom and the Power “I know of no book about a great institution which is so detailed, so intensely personalized, or so dramatized as this volume about The New York Times.”—The Christian Science Monitor “A serious and important account of one of the few genuinely powerful institutions in our society.”—The New Leader “A superb study of people and power.”—Women's Wear Daily

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Page Count

577

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

0679644733

ISBN 13

9780679644736

Unto the Sons

By: Gay Talese

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Unto the Sons

By: Gay Talese

An Italian ROOTS." —The Washington Post Book World At long last, Gay Talese, one of America's greatest living authors, employs his prodigious storytelling gifts to tell the saga of his own family's emigration to America from Italy in the years preceding World War II. Ultimately it is the story of all immigrant families and the hope and sacrifice that took them from the familiarity of the old world into the mysteries and challenges of the new.

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Page Count

594

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307765415

ISBN 13

9780307765413

Honor Thy Father

By: Gay Talese

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Honor Thy Father

By: Gay Talese

Creates a portrait of everyday life within the Mafia world by focusing on three generations of the Bonanno family.

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Page Count

498

Publisher

Random House New York

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804110581

ISBN 13

9780804110587

The Bridge

The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

By: Gay Talese

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The Bridge

The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

By: Gay Talese

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of its completion, a detailed history of the construction of the longest suspension bridge in the United States, linking Brooklyn and Staten Island, features photos and architectural drawings while detailing all the drama and political maneuvering.

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Page Count

194

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1620406667

ISBN 13

9781620406663

Fame and Obscurity

By: Gay Talese

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Fame and Obscurity

By: Gay Talese

Fascinating . . . Poignant." The Wall Street Journal In this extraordinary work of insight and interviews, bestselling author Gay Talese shares with us the lives of those we don't know and those we might wish we did: Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, Manhattan mobsters, Bowery bums, and many others -- fascinating men and women who define our country's spirit and lead us to an understanding of ourselves as a nation.

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353

Published Date

ISBN 10

034546723X

ISBN 13

9780345467232

The Kingdom and the Power

Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World

By: Gay Talese

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The Kingdom and the Power

Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World

By: Gay Talese

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577

Publisher

Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812977688

ISBN 13

9780812977684

Unto the Sons

By: Gay Talese

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Unto the Sons

By: Gay Talese

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594

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307765415

ISBN 13

9780307765413

Bartleby and Me

Reflections of an Old Scrivener

By: Gay Talese

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Bartleby and Me

Reflections of an Old Scrivener

By: Gay Talese

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311

Publisher

HarperCollins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0358447771

ISBN 13

9780358447771

Satch, Dizzy, and Rapid Robert

The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson

By: Timothy M. Gay

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Satch, Dizzy, and Rapid Robert

The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson

By: Timothy M. Gay

Before Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball in 1947, black and white ballplayers had been playing against one another for decades—even, on rare occasions, playing with each other. Interracial contests took place during the off-season, when major leaguers and Negro Leaguers alike fattened their wallets by playing exhibitions in cities and towns across America. These barnstorming tours reached new heights, however, when Satchel Paige and other African- American stars took on white teams headlined by the irrepressible Dizzy Dean. Lippy and funny, a born showman, the native Arkansan saw no reason why he shouldn’t pitch against Negro Leaguers. Paige, who feared no one and chased a buck harder than any player alive, instantly recognized the box-office appeal of competing against Dizzy Dean’s "All-Stars." Paige and Dean both featured soaring leg kicks and loved to mimic each other’s style to amuse fans. Skin color aside, the dirt-poor Southern pitchers had much in common. Historian Timothy M. Gay has unearthed long-forgotten exhibitions where Paige and Dean dueled, and he tells the story of their pioneering escapades in this engaging book. Long before they ever heard of Robinson or Larry Doby, baseball fans from Brooklyn to Enid, Oklahoma, watched black and white players battle on the same diamond. With such Hall of Fame teammates as Josh Gibson, Turkey Stearnes, Mule Suttles, Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, and Bullet Joe Rogan, Paige often had the upper hand against Diz. After arm troubles sidelined Dean, a new pitching phenom, Bob Feller—Rapid Robert—assembled his own teams to face Paige and other blackballers. By the time Paige became Feller’s teammate on the Cleveland Indians in 1948, a rookie at age forty-two, Satch and Feller had barnstormed against each other for more than a decade. These often obscure contests helped hasten the end of Jim Crow baseball, paving the way for the game’s integration. Satchel Paige, Dizzy Dean, and Bob Feller never set out to make social history—but that’s precisely what happened. Tim Gay has brought this era to vivid and colorful life in a book that every baseball fan will embrace.

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386

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1439176310

ISBN 13

9781439176313

Assignment to Hell

The War Against Nazi Germany with Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A .J. Liebling, Homer Bigart, and Hal Boyle

By: Timothy M. Gay

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Assignment to Hell

The War Against Nazi Germany with Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A .J. Liebling, Homer Bigart, and Hal Boyle

By: Timothy M. Gay

“A book every modern journalist—and citizen—should read.”—Tom Brokaw, Author of The Greatest Generation In February 1943, a group of journalists—including a young wire service correspondent named Walter Cronkite and cub reporter Andy Rooney—clamored to fly along on a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. Seven of the sixty-four bombers that attacked a U-boat base that day never made it back to England. A fellow survivor, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, asked Cronkite if he’d thought through a lede. “I think I’m going to say,” mused Cronkite, “that I’ve just returned from an assignment to hell.” Assignment to Hell tells the powerful and poignant story of the war against Hitler through the eyes of five intrepid reporters. Cronkite crashed into Holland on a glider with U.S. paratroopers. Rooney dodged mortar shells as he raced across the Rhine at Remagen. Behind enemy lines in Sicily, Bigart jumped into an amphibious commando raid that nearly ended in disaster. The New Yorker’s A. J. Liebling ducked sniper fire as Allied troops liberated his beloved Paris. The Associated Press’s Hal Boyle barely escaped SS storm troopers as he uncovered the massacre of U.S. soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. This book serves as a stirring tribute to five of World War II’s greatest correspondents and to the brave men and women who fought on the front lines against fascism—their generation’s “assignment to hell.”

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Page Count

530

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0451417151

ISBN 13

9780451417152

High Notes

Selected Writings of Gay Talese

By: Gay Talese

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High Notes

Selected Writings of Gay Talese

By: Gay Talese

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Page Count

289

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1632867478

ISBN 13

9781632867476

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

And Other Essays

By: Gay Talese

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Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

And Other Essays

By: Gay Talese

Gay Talese is the father of American New Journalism, who transformed traditional reportage with his vivid scene-setting, sharp observation and rich storytelling. His 1966 piece for Esquire, one of the most celebrated magazine articles ever published, describes a morose Frank Sinatra silently nursing a glass of bourbon, struck down with a cold and unable to sing, like �Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel � only worse�. The other writings in this selection include a description of a meeting between two legends, Fidel Castro and Muhammad Ali; a brilliantly witty dissection of the offices of Vogue magazine; an account of travelling to Ireland with hellraiser Peter O'Toole; and a profile of fading baseball star Joe DiMaggio, which turns into a moving, immaculately-crafted meditation on celebrity.

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Page Count

229

Publisher

Penguin UK

Published Date

ISBN 10

0141194154

ISBN 13

9780141194158

The Kingdom and the Power

By: Gay Talese

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The Kingdom and the Power

By: Gay Talese

A landmark in the field of writing about journalism." The Nation The classic inside story of The New York Times, the most prestigious, and perhaps the most powerful, of all American newspapers. Bestselling author Talese lays bare the secret internal intrigues behind the tradition of front page exposes in a story as gripping as a work of fiction and as immediate as today's headlines.

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Page Count

627

Publisher

Laurel

Published Date

ISBN 10

0440345251

ISBN 13

9780440345251

Hitler's Ardennes Offensive

The German View of the Battle of the Bulge

By: Danny S. Parker

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Hitler's Ardennes Offensive

The German View of the Battle of the Bulge

By: Danny S. Parker

In this gripping, unusual volume, insight into the Battle of the Bulge is told through firsthand accounts by German officers. The battle, a major German offensive, caught the allied forces off-guard in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg and, lasting from December 1945–January 1945, had devastating consequences for both sides. There were eighty-nine thousand Americans casualties and between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand German ones. It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the Americans during the war—and, yet, in the end, an allied victory. There are Western accounts of the battle, but very little has been told from the German perspective. In Hitler’s Ardennes Offensive, acclaimed military historian Danny S. Parker has compiled together accounts by German officials who reveal how they perceived the battle, how they believe Adolf Hitler perceived it, and what, in their opinion, went wrong. The assessments featured include ones from Nazi leaders such as SS-generals Josef Dietrich and SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Krämer, and they are paired with nine rarely seen photographs and three maps. The images include a photograph of Josef Dietrich taken by Eva Braun, one of Adolf Hitler pouring over a map, and one of SS grenadiers pausing to enjoy captured American cigarettes. The maps show different parts of the German offensive. The unique volume was created after Parker spent twenty-five years studying World War II and conducting more than two hundred interviews on it. Released ten years ago in a limited print run, it is now, shortly after the seventieth anniversary of the battle, finally back in print. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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Page Count

386

Publisher

Skyhorse

Published Date

ISBN 10

1510703705

ISBN 13

9781510703704

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