My phone- and internet- friend Paul Begala, who so generously blurbed The Coup, has written a couldn’t-be-more-timely book called Third Term: Why George W. Bush [Hearts] John McCain. Paul–political consultant, White House counselor, CNN commentator Georgetown professor–and is feisty, combative, and wonderfully witty–the very definition of a Happy Warrior. I’m thrileld that he found time …
Those of you expecting to see Paul Newman and Alexis Smith will be disappointed, but I’m not. This week I was lucky to lunch with two of Philadelphia’s finest: Bill Tonelli (with me, left) of South Philly and Temple University, once my colleague at Esquire, and Joe Queenan (with me, right), the pride of St. …
Under threatening skies in a cozy and picturesque former Hudson River train station, twenty or so lovers of literature (or something) came to see the novelist DeLaune Michel and myself perform in a reading sponsored by the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center. The Center’s director, Jerri Lynn Fields, opened the evening with a discussion of the …
“Dark Horse is the story of Bob Long, the governor of California and candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. With this status he is afflicted only temporarily, since his all-but-secured nomination is swiftly undone through a tricky procedural maneuver sprung after some underhanded double-dealing by his rival. . . .Then, something unusual happens: God …
“Seldom is a book as ill-served by its subtitle. . . ” My review of Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World by David Maraniss appeared in The Washington Post on Sunday.
Regular readers of this blog (and Ken Smith, you know who you are), will recognize the name of my friend, the writer Duane Swierczynski. Duane has just published his latest novel Severance Package, a funny and exciting tale of mayhem that updates the Ten Little Indians idea, subtracting some of the whodunit, adding several vats …
SLICING AND DICING: AN INTERVIEW WITH DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI Read More »
I had a splendid adventure Monday night journeying into the heart of Republican Manhattan for a book party at Patsy’s on West 56th Street in honor of my friend James Rosen and The Strong Man, his new biography of John Mitchell (which received a strong recommendation last Sunday in the Times from William Safire.) Along …
I received a nice letter from Lewis Burke Frumkes, the Director of the Writing Center at Marymount Manhattan College: “I thought your talk was terrific and highly informative. . . .Mr. Stupid may have gone to Washington, but in my book, Mr. Smart came to our conference in New York.” Lewis, I’m blushing!
Had lunch last week with Neal Rechtman, nearly a neighbor from Ossining, and the author of an interesting first novel called The 28th Amendment, which I was happy to blurb. A good guy, and talented, and like me, a onetime student of J.R. Humphreys at Columbia. I hope he sticks with it.
Thanks to an invitation from the inimitable Lewis Burke Frumkes, I delivered the keynote address at the Marymount Manhattan Writers Conference this morning. Lewis asked me to talk about being an editor, so I got to gas on about some of my favorite editorial thoughts, mainly, about how the job of an editor is to …