A rich and varied collection of Pete Hamill's best journalism that spans decades and covers topics as diverse as Donald Trump, stickball, and Northern Ireland.. Veteran journalist Pete Hamill never covered just politics. Or just sports. Or just the entertainment business, the mob, foreign affairs, social issues, the art world, or New York City. He has in fact written about all these subjects, and many more, in his years as a contributor to such national magazines as Esquire, Vanity Fair, and New York, and as a columnist at the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Village Voice, and other newspapers. Seasoned by more than thirty years as a New York newspaperman, Hamill wrote on an extraordinarily wide variety of topics in powerful language that is personal, tough-minded, clearheaded, always provocative. Piecework is a rich and varied collection of Hamill's best writing, on such diverse subjects as what television and crack have in common, why winning isn't everything, stickball, Nicaragua, Donald Trump, why American immigration policy toward Mexico is all wrong, Brooklyn's Seventh Avenue, and Frank Sinatra, not to mention Octavio Paz, what it's like to realize you're middle-aged, Northern Ireland, New York City then and now, how Mike Tyson spent his time in prison, and much more. This collection proves him once again to be among the last of a dying breed: the old-school generalist, who writes about anything and everything, guided only by passionate and boundless curiosity. Piecework is Hamill at his very best.
A recurring theme in "Piecework" is that America has become a place in which people no longer seem to have the basic toughness to accept life's hardships, and must therefore heap the blame upon everyone else. The situation is made worse, Pete Hamill says, by television, which allows people to have deep emotional experiences without "earning" them. This attitude is summed up most effectively in two essays, "Letter to a Black Friend" and the disturbing "Endgame." When Hamill isn't shaking his head at our collective mistakes, he is shining the spotlight on individuals -- as he does in solid features on Mike Tyson and Frank Sinatra -- or examining a city gone wrong, the Miami of the 1980s. Here, and throughout you see the keen observation skills, dogged research, and common sense that made Hamill a top-flight reporter first, an insightful columnist second.Whether or not you share Pete Hamill's old-fashioned, hard-nosed worldview, you won't be able to deny that he expresses it brilliantly here.
Words in the hand of a master craftsman
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
Some beautiful writing--the kind of material you go back to over and over again just to see how he does it. The piece titled "Endgame" is worth the price of the book. It describes the craziness and the downward spiral of this splintered country of ours better than anything I've ever read.
Throw out your j-school textbook!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
Here it is folks: How To Write 101. All you ever needed to know about writing columns is between these two covers, in my opinion.
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