I’m a little surprised by the wave of acclaim that has buoyed Game Change onto the top of the bestsellers’ list. The book was written by Mark Halperin, whose excellent work a few years ago on ABC News’s The Note revolutionized political coverage, and by John Heileman. Halperin now writes for Time; Heilemann, for New …
J.D. Salinger, whom Stephen King today rightfully called “the last of the great post-World War II novelists,” died Thursday in New Hampshire at 91. Most people played up the legacy of The Catcher in the Rye, its great teenage narrator, its definitive postwar voice, its eternal first sentence (“If you really want to hear about …
“I don’t believe the American people want us to focus on our job security, they want us to focus on their job security,” President Obama said at his face-off with Republican members of the House yesterday. In fact, one of the keys to getting Washington focus on our job security, and any and all other …
My friend Steve Lovelady died on January 15. He and I worked together at Time in 1997 and 1998, and although I didn’t have a lot of interaction with him, I found him to smart, decent, tough but low-key, enormously effective, a top-notch editor. And in fact, he was the one who sent me along …
I’m doing some work for Nielsen IAG this week at an office located on Park Avenue South at 26th Street. We’re on the western half of the block; on the east, as I discovered today, is the 69th Regiment Armory, home of New York’s Fighting 69th, and these days, the 165th Infantry Regiment of the …
You can’t say a bad word about Peyton Manning. The very model of the modern managerial quarterback is as heroically cool as the statue of him that the Hoosiers will no doubt erect in front of their football palace the day after he retires. But Manning, like Joe Montana, like Bob Griese, is the kind …
Many years ago, Walter Kirn worked in the cubicle next to me at Spy, and he was a most entertaining neighbor (in fact, Walter was succeeded by Jim Collins and then by Larry Doyle. On the other side, I had Joanne Gruber. Spy provided me with tremendous neighbors.) During Walter’s short tenure, we spent pretty …
From Art Director Richard Weigand, a love letter to writers on the cover of Esquire‘s 40th anniversary issue in October 1973, showing contributors John Kenneth Galbraith, Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Alan Arthur, Murray Kempton, John Updike, William Styron, Gay Talese, Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Philip Roth, Dwight Macdonald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James …
Cleaning out the attic, I came upon a box dating from when I was a teenager, which as sure as anything, should have predicted that I would end up with a career in magazines. Great covers–brilliant covers! The concepts, the execution, the photograph and illustration. Makes my heart go pitty pat!