On latimes.com, James Rainey has an article about Amy Hertz, the editor of the Huffington Post’s new books section. “Hertz told me she has had so many submissions — “an embarrassment of riches”– in the opening days of HuffPost Books that she can’t find room for them all on the site, which does not pay …
Greg Olear, the author of a novel called Totally Killer that is “part thriller, part satire, part period piece” that has to do with the collision of conspiracy and pop culture in New York in 1991, writes about his “unlikely influences” on a blog on the Powell’s Bookstore site. After citing Weird Al Yankovic, Mad …
Thanks to the Columbia Journalism Review for publishing my little tribute to Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of their campaign for Mayor and City Council President of New York, and to Joe Flaherty, whose memoir of the campaign Managing Mailer, was one of the funniest things I ever …
Tad Friend, once upon a time my colleague at Spy, has written a family memoir called Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor. It’s elegantly written, with many beautiful and touching passages, and the affection for his family really shows through. One very personal reaction it engendered from me was …
Matthew Latimer, a former Bush 43 speechwriter, just published a memoir of his couple of years serving in the White House, and apparently it’s kicking up a small cloud of criticism from his former colleagues. “Without having read a single word, they’ve been on this mission against me—and it’s disappointing,” Latimer told The Daily Beast‘s …
WHY WOULD BUSH LOYALISTS WANT TO KILL THIS BOOK? Read More »
While researching what I’m happy to report will become an article in The Washington Monthly on the use of CCTV in Great Britain, I became an admirer of the work of Henry Porter. This means I come to the Porter fan club rather late, since Henry has had a long and distinguished career as a …
Trawling through photo albums last week, I found these wonderful pictures. Left, Kurt and Kate Andersen; above, George Kalogerakis, Rachel Urquhart, Spike and Graydon Carter. Below left, Molly Malanowski and me. These three photos were taken in 1989 at Kurt’s place in Putnam County. Below right, Molly, earlier that same year, in our apartment in …
I just finished an awfully good debut novel by a young writer named Thomas Leveritt called The Exchange-Rate Between Love and Money. The book takes place among a group of international expatriates who have come to Sarajevo in the still-shaky aftermath of the conflict in the nineties. Quick-buck artists, soldiers of fortune, peacekeepers, international aid …
One of the more pleasant respites in what has proven to be a fairly challenging summer (thank goodness for the Yankees–so far) has been the discovery of Battlestar Galactica (above, the trailer for Season One). I am not sure if it was prejudice against the original series or prejudice against the Sci-Fi Channel, or some …
I am an enormous fan of the British writer Nick Laird, whose first novel, Utterly Monkey, was raucous and funny and evocative of modern life among young Londoners. I just finished his new novel, Glover’s Mistake, which is smart and knowing about relationships and personalities and art and love. In both books, what jumps out …