Most Popular Books by David Remnick

David Remnick is a writer with a rare gift for making readers understand the hearts and minds of our public figures. Whether it’s the decline and fall of Mike Tyson, Al Gore’s struggle to move forward after his loss in the 2000 election, or Vladimir Putin dealing with Gorbachev’s legacy, Remnick brings his subjects to life with extraordinary clarity and depth. In Reporting, he gives us his best writing from the past fifteen years, ranging from American politics and culture to post-Soviet Russia to the Middle East conflict; from Tony Blair grappling with Iraq, to Philip Roth making sense of America’s past, to the rise of Hamas in Palestine. Both intimate and deeply informed by history, Reporting is an exciting and panoramic portrait of our times.

The bestselling biography of Muhammad Ali--with an Introduction by Salman Rushdie On the night in 1964 that Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) stepped into the ring with Sonny Liston, he was widely regarded as an irritating freak who danced and talked way too much. Six rounds later Ali was not only the new world heavyweight boxing champion: He was "a new kind of black man" who would shortly transform America''s racial politics, its popular culture, and its notions of heroism. No one has captured Ali--and the era that he exhilarated and sometimes infuriated--with greater vibrancy, drama, and astuteness than David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lenin''s Tomb (and editor of The New Yorker). In charting Ali''s rise from the gyms of Louisville, Kentucky, to his epochal fights against Liston and Floyd Patterson, Remnick creates a canvas of unparalleled richness. He gives us empathetic portraits of wisecracking sportswriters and bone-breaking mobsters; of the baleful Liston and the haunted Patterson; of an audacious Norman Mailer and an enigmatic Malcolm X. Most of all, King of the World does justice to the speed, grace, courage, humor, and ebullience of one of the greatest athletes and irresistibly dynamic personalities of our time.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times From the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov. An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times.

One of art''s purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker has met this challenge more successfully and more originally than any other modern American journal. It has indelibly shaped the genre known as the Profile. Starting with light-fantastic evocations of glamorous and idiosyncratic figures of the twenties and thirties, such as Henry Luce and Isadora Duncan, and continuing to the present, with complex pictures of such contemporaries as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Richard Pryor, this collection of New Yorker Profiles presents readers with a portrait gallery of some of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century. These Profiles are literary-journalistic investigations into character and accomplishment, motive and madness, beauty and ugliness, and are unrivalled in their range, their variety of style, and their embrace of humanity. Including these twenty-eight profiles: “Mr. Hunter’s Grave” by Joseph Mitchell “Secrets of the Magus” by Mark Singer “Isadora” by Janet Flanner “The Soloist” by Joan Acocella “Time . . . Fortune . . . Life . . . Luce” by Walcott Gibbs “Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody” by Ian Frazier “The Mountains of Pi” by Richard Preston “Covering the Cops” by Calvin Trillin “Travels in Georgia” by John McPhee “The Man Who Walks on Air” by Calvin Tomkins “A House on Gramercy Park” by Geoffrey Hellman “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” by Lillian Ross “The Education of a Prince” by Alva Johnston “White Like Me” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “Wunderkind” by A. J. Liebling “Fifteen Years of The Salto Mortale” by Kenneth Tynan “The Duke in His Domain” by Truman Capote “A Pryor Love” by Hilton Als “Gone for Good” by Roger Angell “Lady with a Pencil” by Nancy Franklin “Dealing with Roseanne” by John Lahr “The Coolhunt” by Malcolm Gladwell “Man Goes to See a Doctor” by Adam Gopnik “Show Dog” by Susan Orlean “Forty-One False Starts” by Janet Malcolm “The Redemption” by Nicholas Lemann “Gore Without a Script” by Nicholas Lemann “Delta Nights” by Bill Buford

National Bestseller In this nuanced and complex portrait of Barack Obama, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Remnick offers a thorough, intricate, and riveting account of the unique experiences that shaped our nation’s first African American president. Through extensive on-the-record interviews with friends and teachers, mentors and disparagers, family members and Obama himself, Remnick explores the elite institutions that first exposed Obama to social tensions, and the intellectual currents that contributed to his identity. Using America’s racial history as a backdrop for Obama’s own story, Remnick further reveals how an initially rootless and confused young man built on the experiences of an earlier generation of black leaders to become one of the central figures of our time. Masterfully written and eminently readable, The Bridge is destined to be a lasting and illuminating work for years to come, by a writer with an unparalleled gift for revealing the historical significance of our present moment.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Remnick chronicles the new Russia that emerged from the ash heap of the Soviet Union. From the siege of Parliament to the farcically tilted elections of 1996, from the rubble of Grozny to the grandiose wealth and naked corruption of today''s Moscow, Remnick chronicles a society so racked by change that its citizens must daily ask themselves who they are, where they belong, and what they believe in. Remnick composes this panorama out of dozens of finely realized individual portraits. Here is Mikhail Gorbachev, his head still swimming from his plunge from reverence to ridicule. Here is Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the half-Jewish anti-Semite who conducts politics as loony performance art. And here is Boris Yeltsin, the tottering populist who is not above stealing elections. In Resurrection, they become the players in a drama so vast and moving that it deserves comparison with the best reportage of George Orwell and Michael Herr. "This is what happens when a good writer unleashes eye and ear on a story that moves with the speed of light. Resurrection has the feel of describing vast, historical change even as it is happening."--Chicago Tribune

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and editor of The New Yorker gathers his writing on some of the essential musicians of our time—intimate portraits of Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more. The greatest popular songs, whether it’s “Respect” sung by Aretha Franklin or “Blind Willie McTell” performed by Bob Dylan, have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling whenever you hear them. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about some of the most influential musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years. He portrays a series of musical lives—Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more—and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. From Cohen’s performing debut, when his stage fright was so debilitating he couldn’t get through “Suzanne,” to Franklin’s iconic mink-drop at the Kennedy Center, Holding the Note delivers intimate portraits of some of the greatest creative minds of our era, written with a passionate lifelong attachment to their music and an acute appreciation of how it has shaped us.

Readers know from his now classic Lenin''s Tomb that Remnick is a superb portraitist who can bring his subjects to life and reveal them in such surprising ways as to justify comparison to Dickens, Balzac, or Proust. In this collection, Remnick''s gift for character is sharper than ever, whether he writes about Gary Hart stumbling through life after Donna Rice or Mario Cuomo, who now presides over a Saturday morning radio talk show, fielding questions from crackpots, or about Michael Jordan''s awesome return to the Chicago Bulls -- or Reggie Jackson''s last times at bat. Remnick''s portraits of such disparate characters as Alger Hiss and Ralph Ellison, Richard Nixon and Elaine Pagels, Gerry Adams and Marion Barry are unified by this extraordinary ability to create a living character, so that the pieces in this book, taken together, constitute a splendid pageant of the representative characters of our time.

A collection of the New Yorker''s groundbreaking writing on race in America, including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** NOTE: The January 6th Report appendices on pages 693–716 can be accessed via the QR code below, along with the hyperlinks from the chapter endnotes and witness testimony transcripts. Celadon Books and The New Yorker present the report by the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. On January 6, 2021, insurgents stormed the U.S. Capitol, an act of domestic terror without parallel in American history, designed to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. In a resolution six months later, the House of Representatives called it "one of the darkest days of our democracy," and established a special committee to investigate how and why the attack happened. Celadon Books, in collaboration with The New Yorker, presents the committee''s final report, the definitive account of January 6th and what led up to it, based on more than a year of investigation by nine members of Congress and committee staff, with a preface by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and an epilogue by Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a member of the committee.

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine''s place of origin and its sensibility''s lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine''s most accomplished contributors, celebrates the seventy-five-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of forty-four of its best stories from (so to speak) home. East Side? Philip Roth''s chronically tormented alter ego Nathan Zuckerman has just moved there, in "Smart Money." West Side? Isaac Bashevis Singer''s narrator mingles with the customers in "The Cafeteria" (who debate politics and culture in four or five different languages) and becomes embroiled in an obsessional romance. And downtown, John Updike''s Maples have begun their courtship of marital disaster, in "Snowing in Greenwich Village." Wonderful Town touches on some of the city''s famous places and stops at some of its more obscure corners, but the real guidebook in and between its lines is to the hearts and the minds of those who populate the metropolis built by its pages. Like all good fiction, these stories take particular places, particular people, and particular events and turn them into dramas of universal enlightenment and emotional impact. Each life in it, and each life in Wonderful Town, is the life of us all. Including these stories from the magazine''s most iconic writers: “The Five-Fourty-Eight” by John Cheever “Distant Music” by Ann Beattle “Sailor off the Bremen” by Irwin Shaw “Physics” by Tama Janowitz “The Whore of Mensa” by Woody Allen “What it was Like, Seeing Chris” by Deborah Eisenberg “Drawing Room B” by John O’Hara “A Sentimental Journey” by Peter Taylor “The Balloon” by Donald Barthelme “Another Marvellous Thing” by Laurie Colwin “The Failure” by Jonathan Franzen “Apartment Hotel” by Sally Benson “Midair” by Frank Conroy “The Catbird Seat” by James Thurber “I See You, Bianca” by Maeve Brennan “You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore “Signs and Symbols” by Vladimir Nabokov “Poor Visitor” by Jamaica Kincaid “In Greenwich, There Are Many Gravelled Walks” by Hortense Calisher “Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in this Place” by John McNulty “Slight Rebellion Off Madison” by J. D. Salinger “Brownstone” by Renata Adler “Partners” by Veronica Geng “The Evolution of Knowledge” by Niccolo Tucci “The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag “Do the Windows Open?” by Julie Hecht “The Mentocrats” by Edward Newhouse “The Treatment” by Daniel Menaker “Arrangement in Black and White” by Dorothy Parker “Carlyle Tries Polygamy” by William Melvin Kelley “Children Are Bored on Sunday” by Jean Stafford “Notes from a Bottle” by James Stevenson “Man in the Middle of the Ocean” by Daniel Fuchs “Me Spoulets of the Splendide” by Ludwig Bemelmans “Over by the River” by William Maxwell “Baster” by Jeffrey Eugenides “The Second Tree from the Corner” by E. B. White “Rembrandt’s Hat” by Bernard Malamud “Shot: A New York Story” by Elizabeth Hardwick “A Father-To-Be” by Saul Bellow “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer” by S. J. Perelman “Water Child” by Edwidge Danticat “The Smoker” by David Schickler

A New York Times New & Noteworthy Book One of the Daily Beast''s 5 Essential Books to Read Before the Election A collection of the New Yorker''s groundbreaking reporting from the front lines of climate change--including writing from Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ian Frazier, Kathryn Schulz, and more Just one year after climatologist James Hansen first came before a Senate committee and testified that the Earth was now warmer than it had ever been in recorded history, thanks to humankind''s heedless consumption of fossil fuels, New Yorker writer Bill McKibben published a deeply reported and considered piece on climate change and what it could mean for the planet. At the time, the piece was to some speculative to the point of alarmist; read now, McKibben''s work is heroically prescient. Since then, the New Yorker has devoted enormous attention to climate change, describing the causes of the crisis, the political and ecological conditions we now find ourselves in, and the scenarios and solutions we face. The Fragile Earth tells the story of climate change--its past, present, and future--taking readers from Greenland to the Great Plains, and into both laboratories and rain forests. It features some of the best writing on global warming from the last three decades, including Bill McKibben''s seminal essay "The End of Nature," the first piece to popularize both the science and politics of climate change for a general audience, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Elizabeth Kolbert, as well as Kathryn Schulz, Dexter Filkins, Jonathan Franzen, Ian Frazier, Eric Klinenberg, and others. The result, in its range, depth, and passion, promises to bring light, and sometimes heat, to the great emergency of our age.

Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley''s Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould''s Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style. These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

The latest addition to the acclaimed series showcasing the best sports writing from the past year

La historia de uno de los más grandes atletas y una de las personalidades más irresistibles de nuestro tiempo, Muhammad Ali. Cuando aquella noche de 1964, Muhammad Ali, conocido por entonces como Cassius Clay, saltó al cuadrilátero para enfrentarse a Sonny Liston, fue contemplado por todo el mundo como un irritante adefesio que se movía y hablaba demasiado. Seis asaltos, después, Ali no sólo se había convertido en el nuevo campeón del mundo de los pesos pesados: era el «nuevo hombre negro» que en poco tiempo transformaría la política racial, la cultura popular y las nociones de heroísmo de Estados Unidos. Explorando la ascensión de Ali desde los gimnasios de Louisville, Kentucky, el autor crea un lienzo de incomparable riqueza y nos ofrece un minucioso retrato de las mafias que controlaban el negocio, de los columnistas que dominaban la información deportiva, de un audaz Norman Mailer y de un enigmático Malcom X. Nadie ha captado a Ali con tanta viveza, pasión y sagacidad como David Remnick, ganador de un premio Pulitzer y director de The New Yorker. Pero Rey del mundo es mucho más: es la crónica de una de las épocas de Estados Unidos -la década prodigiosa- más vitales y vertiginosas; y hace justicia a la rapidez, gracia, valor, humor y entusiasmo de uno de los más grandes atletas y de una de las personalidades más irresistibles de nuestro tiempo. La crítica ha dicho... «Revela detalles que ni los más cercanos a Ali han sabido nunca. Una historia fascinante.» The New York Times «Uno de los innumerables méritos de este Premio Pulitzer es huir de los juicios morales sobre la materia de estudio y escapar de la persecuciónlineal de meros datos biográficos para situarnos ante un púgil que hizo de su raza el motor de su epopeya vital.» El Mundo «Es una historia extraordinaria, y Remnick capta lo mejor de ella.» Clarín «Ha conseguido más éxito que cualquier otro libro anterior sobre Ali. Un derroche de energía, ego y habilidad como nunca volveremos a ver.» The Wall Street Journal «El mejor libro de no-ficción del año.» Time «Un poder narrativo casi cardiaco. Una importante crónica sobre un período en la historia social de Estados Unidos.» Chicago Tribune «Un placer. Inquietante. Tan rico que cualquiera puede imaginarse a Ali diciendo: "¿Cómo conseguiste entrar en mi cabeza, colega?"» Wilfrid Sheed, Time

“Para los protagonistas del Movimiento por los Derechos Civiles en Estados Unidos hay varias fechas marcadas en rojo en el calendario. La del domingo 7 de marzo de 1965 (el “Domingo Sangriento”) es, sin ninguna duda, una de esas efemérides. Ese fue el día elegido por un grupo de activistas del movimiento liderado por Martin Luther King para emprender una marcha pacífica y silenciosa en protesta por el incumplimiento de la Ley de Derechos Civiles, aprobada un año antes por el presidente Lyndon B. Johnson. En principio, el itinerario previsto para la manifestación debía unir las localidades de Selma y Montgomery, en el estado de Alamaba; sin embargo, la marcha fue detenida a la salida de Selma por la policía del estado que, a la altura del puente Edmund Pettus, reprimió de forma violenta a los manifestantes. Por entonces Barack Obama tenía tres años y no imaginaba que cuarenta y dos años más tarde, el 4 de marzo de 2007, iba a hablar en la Brown Chapel de Selma y se iba a encontrar en ese mismo puente con algunos de los protagonistas de aquellos hechos históricos, solo un mes después de anunciar su candidatura a la nominación del Partido Demócrata para la presidencia de los Estados Unidos. La relación entre estos dos momentos clave y la trayectoria histórica seguida por los Estados Unidos y por su actual presidente es lo que intenta reconstruir David Remnick” uno de los periodistas más reputados de la prensa americana actual y un auténtico especialista en la elaboración de perfiles humanos, siempre caracterizados ... por una documentación abrumadora basada en la precisión y exactitud de cada dato, de todas y cada una de las fuentes que cita en su trabajo.

Když v noci roku 1964 vstupoval do ringu, aby bojoval proti Sonnymu Listonovi, byl Muhammad Ali (tehdy ještě Cassius Clay) považován za podivína, který při boxování až příliš tancuje a mluví. O šest kol později byl Ali nejen novým šampionem v těžké váze, zároveň byl i „novým typem černocha“, který brzy změní rasovou politiku Ameriky, její pop-kulturu a představy o hrdinství. I přes své kontroverzní chování a názory je Muhammad Ali stále považován za jednoho z nejlepších boxerů v historii. Vzestupy a pády jednoho z největších sportovců světa líčí David Remnick, nositel Pulitzerovy ceny za román Lenin’s Tomb (Leninova hrobka), s nesmírným osobním zaujetím. Dokáže se vcítit jak do něj, tak do jeho soupeřů i vlezlých novinářů. S lehkostí nám předkládá plastický obraz sportovce, ale i doby, ve které žil. Jeho kontroverzní život, temperament a neustálý neklid, který ho popoháněl dál.

Na noite de 1964, quando Muhammad Ali (ainda Cassius Clay) subiu ao ringue com Sonny Liston, ele era tido como um sujeito irritante, um sujeito que se movimentava e falava demais. Seis rounds mais tarde, Ali não era apenas o mais novo campeão mundial dos pesos pesados - era "um novo tipo de negro", como ele mesmo se denominou. O rei do mundo reconstitui a trajetória desse lutador que ajudou a transformar a política racial, a cultura popular e a noção de heroísmo dos norte-americanos. Repleto de detalhes saborosos e fotos reveladoras, O rei do mundo mostra Muhammad Ali como uma invenção de si mesmo: desde o menino Cassius e sua infância em Louisville até os treinos obsessivos e a mudança de nome e de religião. Ao descrever as principais lutas de Ali, David Remnick conseguiu capturar o espírito predominante da época que marcou a grande transformação da mentalidade americana, embalada pela ascensão política dos negros, por conflitos morais e pela disseminação de organizações como a Nação do Islã e a Máfia. Recusando-se a assumir qualquer papel exemplar ou corresponder a expectativas, Muhammad Ali marcou uma das décadas mais intensas do século XX - um tempo em que a vida se constituía de enfrentamentos duros, dentro e fora do ringue.

From America’s cultural gatekeeper comes a profile of the man who defines the nation’s soul. David Remnick, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and editor of The New Yorker, applies his unique journalistic voice to paint a portrait of rock legend and working-class poet Bruce Springsteen. The result is what Rolling Stone called ‘one of the most thorough profiles of Springsteen ever published’. Remnick shadows Springsteen from his recent Wrecking Ball world tour, the whole way back to the beginning, back to Asbury Park, to childhood rock’n’roll fantasies. Details of Springsteen’s strained relationship with his father, his battle with mental illness, his marriage, and the joys and anguish of friendships forged and lost with ephemeral E Street Band members, are all delicately woven through a career that spans over four decades as America’s working-class hero. We Are Alive not only tells the story of a living legend, but also produces an insight into the heart of America, the drive of self-transformation and renewal. Remnick has created an important text on the history of music.

Las mejores piezas del director del New Yorker, un maestro del periodismo contemporáneo David Remnick tiene el don poco común de revelar a los lectores el alma y la mente de las figuras públicas. Su penetrante mirada disecciona a políticos, escritores o púgiles, y su pluma sirve unos retratos perfectamente aliñados. Remnick logra combinar en sus vívidas piezas una extraordinaria claridad con la profundidad del mejor periodismo. Reportero reúne sus mejores textos de los últimos 20 años, desde la política estadounidense a la Rusia post soviética, pasando por Hamás, Tony Blair, Bruce Springsteen, Solzhenytsin o Philip Roth.

El fascinante perfil de The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, realizado por David Remnick. Una noche de 1957, un niño llamado Bruce Springsteen se quedó embobado viendo a Elvis Presley en la televisión y le confesó a su madre que así quería ser de mayor. Más de medio siglo más tarde The Boss se ha convertido en una de las leyendas más sólidas del rock, llenando estadios en medio mundo y extendiendo la tradición alternativa del rock como una forma del progresismo político, en sus palabras «una forma de denunciar la distancia entre la retórica y la realidad de Estados Unidos». David Remnick, una leyenda del periodismo estadounidense, acompañó a Springsteen en los ensayos y parte de la gira mundial que emprendió en 2012. Estamos vivos es el fascinante retrato de artista maduro, una obra maestra del periodismo narrativo.

¿Quién no revive momentos solo con escuchar el principio de una canción? Sostener la nota reúne los ensayos del director de The New Yorker sobre el ocaso profesional de los grandes de la música. Desde el debut de Leonard Cohen, cuando su miedo escénico le impedía terminar «Suzanne», hasta la icónica caída del abrigo de visón de ArethaFranklin en el Kennedy Center mientras Barack y Michelle Obama aplaudían efusivamente. En Sostener la nota, el legendario director de la revista The New Yorker, David Remnick, reúne sus escritos sobre algunos de los músicos, compositores e intérpretes más famosos del mundo con vocación de entender cómo han pervivido en el tempo y en el tiempo las mayores y más populares voces del último siglo en Estados Unidos. Ganador de un premio Pulitzer por La tumba de Lenin, Remnick toma como hilo conductor las fulgurantes y longevas carreras de los mayores iconos musicales del planeta (Patti Smith, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Buddy Guy...) para entregar una reflexión magistral sobre el éxito, el fracaso, el estrellato, el relevo generacional y el ocaso profesional. Este bestseller, que recoge con gracia los grandes momentos de la música de los últimos cincuenta años, atrapará tanto a melómanos empedernidos como amantes del periodismo gracias a los minuciosos e íntimos retratos que ofrece. La crítica ha dicho: «Siempre cercano y personal, siempre tenaz y bien informado por profundas investigaciones, y siempre vívido y veraz». The Times «Esta colección de artículos de David Remnick puede considerarse pura literatura. Trata al lector como a un igual, bien informado e inteligente». The New York Times «Una recopilación de perfiles excepcionalmente vívidos y melódicos de músicos al final de su vida. Escritos a lo largo de las tres últimas décadas, son encuentros agudamente observados, profundamente sentidos y juiciosamente detallados de una auténtica comunión que mezcla entrevistas, biografía y análisis, todo ello a través de una lírica y alegre composición». Donna Seaman, Booklist «Aquí hay chicha y mucha observación astuta. Un placer para los sentidos de los melómanos cultos». Kirkus Reviews «Una excepcional colección de artículos. Los minuciosos detalles que Remnick observa añaden textura, pero lo más destacable es su habilidad para reconocer al mismo tiempo el legado musical de los artistas y sus falibilidades humanas. Los aficionados a la música se deleitarán con esta mirada tras el telón». Publishers Weekly «Remnick tiene un estilo fuerte y musculado, pero sin pretensiones, y una curiosidad inquieta que le permite escribir tan bien sobre literatura y política como sobre boxeo». New Statesman

Los perfiles de dos novelistas fundamentales por el director del New Yorker. Nacidos con apenas tres años de diferencia, Philip Roth (1933) y Don DeLillo (1936) son dos glorias vivas de las letras americanas que han sido retratados por la ágil pluma de David Remnick. Pocos escritores concitan tanta unanimidad como el estadounidense Philip Roth. Es uno de los novelistas fundamentales de los últimos cincuenta años y fue el primer escritor vivo publicado en la Library of America. En este extraordinario perfil, Remnick repasa las obras maestras de Roth, la polémica que acompañó sus inicios tras la publicación de El lamento de Portnoy, la depresión que a mediados de los 90 le llevó a refugiarse en la literatura y las opiniones de Roth sobre el futuro de la literatura y las raíces de su arte. Y si Roth es el escritor público, que se crece ante la hostilidad, Don DeLillo es el autor huidizo, que intenta evitar la exposición pública. Sin embargo, su obra, con cumbres como Submundo o Libra, le ha convertido en uno de los novelistas más prestigiosos de la actualidad. Remnick va en su busca a un pueblecito cercano a Nueva York y le acompaña en un paseo por su barrio natal para buscar los temas y las preocupaciones que marcan sus novelas.