Most Popular Books by Robert Gottlieb

"The editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster writes with wit and candor about becoming the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America''s preeminent magazine, "--NoveList.

The product of a lifetime immersed in the literary, performing arts, and entertainment worlds, Robert Gottlieb''s Lives and Letters spotlights the work, careers, intimate lives, and lasting achievements of a vast array of celebrated writers and performers in film, theater, and dance, and some of the more curious iconic public figures of our times. From the world of literature, Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Judith Krantz, John Steinbeck, and Rudyard Kipling; the controversies surrounding Bruno Bettelheim and Elia Kazan; and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her editor, Maxwell Perkins. From dance and theater, Isadora Duncan and Margot Fonteyn, Serge Diaghilev and George Balanchine, Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. In Hollywood, Bing Crosby and Judy Garland, Douglas Fairbanks and Lillian Gish, Tallulah Bankhead and Katharine Hepburn, Mae West and Anna May Wong. In New York, Diana Vreeland, the Trumps, and Gottlieb''s own take on the contretemps that followed his replacing William Shawn at The New Yorker. And so much more . . .

A new collection of immersive essays from the most acclaimed editor of the second half of the twentieth century This new collection from the legendary editor Robert Gottlieb features twenty or so pieces he’s written mostly for The New York Review of Books, ranging from reconsiderations of American writers such as Dorothy Parker, Thornton Wilder, Thomas Wolfe (“genius”), and James Jones, to Leonard Bernstein, Lorenz Hart, Lady Diana Cooper (“the most beautiful girl in the world”), the actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth, the scandalous movie star Mary Astor, and not-yet president Donald Trump. The writings compiled here are as various as they are provocative: an extended probe into the world of post-death experiences; a sharp look at the biopics of transcendent figures such as Shakespeare, Molière, and Austen; a soap opera-ish movie account of an alleged affair between Chanel and Stravinsky; and a copious sampling of the dance reviews he’s been writing for The New York Observer for close to twenty years. A worthy successor to his expansive 2011 collection, Lives and Letters, and his admired 2016 memoir, Avid Reader, Near-Death Experiences displays the same insight and intellectual curiosity that have made Gottlieb, in the words of The New York Times’s Dwight Garner, “the most acclaimed editor of the second half of the twentieth century.”

A New York Times Book Review Editors'' Choice | One of Esquire''s 125 best books about Hollywood Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her. “Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s minds, hearts, and dreams.” Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in sixteen short years, to infiltrate the world’s subconscious; the end of her film career, when she was thirty-six, only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in just twenty-four Hollywood movies, yet her impact on the world—and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed—was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe’s. She was looked on as a unique phenomenon, a sphinx, a myth, the most beautiful woman in the world, but in reality she was a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard. When she arrived in Hollywood, aged nineteen, she spoke barely a word of English and was completely unprepared for the ferocious publicity that quickly adhered to her as, almost overnight, she became the world’s most famous actress. In Garbo, the acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb offers a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the world—her desperate, futile striving to be “left alone.” He takes us through the films themselves, from M-G-M’s early presentation of her as a “vamp”—her overwhelming beauty drawing men to their doom, a formula she loathed—to the artistic heights of Camille and Ninotchka (“Garbo Laughs!”), by way of Anna Christie (“Garbo Talks!”), Mata Hari, and Grand Hotel. He examines her passive withdrawal from the movies, and the endless attempts to draw her back. And he sketches the life she led as a very wealthy woman in New York—“a hermit about town”—and the life she led in Europe among the Rothschilds and men like Onassis and Churchill. Her relationships with her famous co-star John Gilbert, with Cecil Beaton, with Leopold Stokowski, with Erich Maria Remarque, with George Schlee—were they consummated? Was she bisexual? Was she sexual at all? The whole world wanted to know—and still wants to know. In addition to offering his rich account of her life, Gottlieb, in what he calls “A Garbo Reader,” brings together a remarkable assembly of glimpses of Garbo from other people’s memoirs and interviews, ranging from Ingmar Bergman and Tallulah Bankhead to Roland Barthes; from literature (she turns up everywhere—in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, in Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and the letters of Marianne Moore and Alice B. Toklas); from countless songs and cartoons and articles of merchandise. Most extraordinary of all are the pictures—250 or so ravishing movie stills, formal portraits, and revealing snapshots—all reproduced here in superb duotone. She had no personal vanity, no interest in clothes and make-up, yet the story of Garbo is essentially the story of a face and the camera. Forty years after her career ended, she was still being tormented by unrelenting paparazzi wherever she went. Includes Black-and-White Photographs

After considering the historical roots of environmentalism from the 1890s through the 1960s, Gottlieb discusses the rise and consolidation of environmental groups in the years between Earth Day 1970 and Earth Day 1990. A comprehensive analysis of the origins of the environmental movement within the American experience.

"With this rich account of its community and labor struggles, the city of angels—and apocalypse—becomes the city of hope."—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America "This wonderful book, with its evocations of LA''s alternative histories, and its bold templates for social and environmental justice, is proof that the American Left is alive and well, especially in Southern California."—Mike Davis, author of Dead Cities "A rare book combining history, analysis, strategy and a platform – and it may well be carried out in this decade."—Tom Hayden, former State Senator, Los Angeles

A call for a broadened environmental movement that addresses issues of everyday life. In Environmentalism Unbound, Robert Gottlieb proposes a new strategy for social and environmental change that involves reframing and linking the movements for environmental justice and pollution prevention. According to Gottlieb, the environmental movement''s narrow conception of environment has isolated it from vital issues of everyday life, such as workplace safety, healthy communities, and food security, that are often viewed separately as industrial, community, or agricultural concerns. This fragmented approach prevents an awareness of how these issues are also environmental issues. After tracing a history of environmental perspectives on land and resources, city and countryside, and work and industry, Gottlieb focuses on three compelling examples of this new approach to social and environmental change. The first involves a small industry (dry cleaning) and the debate over pollution prevention approaches; the second involves a set of products (janitorial cleaning supplies) that may be hazardous to workers; and the third explores the obstacles and opportunities presented by community or regional approaches to food supply in the face of an increasingly globalized food system.

Part of the Eminent Lives Series, this biography, written by the gifted author Robert Gottlieb, will describe the life of the dynamic George Balanchine, the foremost contemporary choreographer in ballet. Timed to coincide with the 2004 centenary of the artist''s birth. The life and achievement of the great choreographer who both summed up everything that proceeded him in ballet, and extended the art form into radical yet inevitable new paths. Leaving Revolutionary Russia in 1924 (he was 20), he joined Serge Diaghilev''s famous Ballets Russes, where he created his first enduring masterpiece, Apollo, cementing his lifelong collaboration with Stravinsky. In 1933 he arrived in America to found a school and a company, but the company as we know it – The New York City Ballet – didn''t emerge until 1948. Meanwhile, he made ballets wherever opportunity allowed, while choreographing Broadway shows (four for Rodgers and Hart), movies (The Goldwyn Follies), even the circus – a ballet for elephants with a score by Stravinsky. By the time of his death, in 1983, he had been recognized as a member of the triad of the greatest modern masters, alongside Picasso and Stravinsky. Balanchine was married many times, always to outstanding ballerinas, but his truest muse always remained Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance.

Everything about Sarah Bernhardt is fascinating, from her obscure birth to her glorious career--redefining the very nature of her art--to her amazing (and highly public) romantic life, to her indomitable spirit. Well into her seventies, after the amputation of her leg, she was performing under bombardment for soldiers during World War I and toured America for the ninth time. Though the Bernhardt literature is vast, this is the first English-language biography to appear in decades, tracking the trajectory through which an illegitimate--and scandalous--daughter of a Jewish courtesan transformed herself into the most famous actress who ever lived, and into a national icon, a symbol of France.--From publisher description.

Examines the debate on the environmental issue of garbage control.

While most historians, journalists, and filmmakers have focused on Los Angeles as a bastion of corporate greed, business boosterism, political corruption, cheap labor, exploited immigrants, and unregulated sprawl, The Next Los Angeles tells a different story: that of the reformers and radicals who have struggled for alternative visions of social and economic justice. In a new preface, the authors reflect on the gathering momentum of L.A.''s progressive movement, including the 2005 landslide victory of Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor.

The strange and varied lives of the ten children of the world''s most beloved novelist Charles Dickens, famous for the indelible child characters he created—from Little Nell to Oliver Twist and David Copperfield—was also the father of ten children (and a possible eleventh). What happened to those children is the fascinating subject of Robert Gottlieb''s Great Expectations. With sympathy and understanding he narrates the highly various and surprising stories of each of Dickens''s sons and daughters, from Kate, who became a successful artist, to Frank, who died in Moline, Illinois, after serving a grim stretch in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Each of these lives is fascinating on its own. Together they comprise a unique window on Victorian England as well as a moving and disturbing study of Dickens as a father and as a man.

The story of how the emerging food justice movement is seeking to transform the American food system from seed to table. In today''s food system, farm workers face difficult and hazardous conditions, low-income neighborhoods lack supermarkets but abound in fast-food restaurants and liquor stores, food products emphasize convenience rather than wholesomeness, and the international reach of American fast-food franchises has been a major contributor to an epidemic of “globesity.” To combat these inequities and excesses, a movement for food justice has emerged in recent years seeking to transform the food system from seed to table. In Food Justice, Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi tell the story of this emerging movement. A food justice framework ensures that the benefits and risks of how food is grown and processed, transported, distributed, and consumed are shared equitably. Gottlieb and Joshi recount the history of food injustices and describe current efforts to change the system, including community gardens and farmer training in Holyoke, Massachusetts, youth empowerment through the Rethinkers in New Orleans, farm-to-school programs across the country, and the Los Angeles school system''s elimination of sugary soft drinks from its cafeterias. And they tell how food activism has succeeded at the highest level: advocates waged a grassroots campaign that convinced the Obama White House to plant a vegetable garden. The first comprehensive inquiry into this emerging movement, Food Justice addresses the increasing disconnect between food and culture that has resulted from our highly industrialized food system.

Why a care economy and care-centered politics can influence and reorient such issues as health, the environment, climate, race, inequality, gender, and immigration. This agenda-setting book presents a framework for creating a more just and equitablecare-centered world. Climate change, pandemic events, systemic racism, and deep inequalities have all underscored the centrality of care in our lives. Yet care work is, for the most part, undervalued and exploited. In this book, Robert Gottlieb examines how a care economy and care politics can influence and remake health, climate, and environmental policy, as well as the institutions and practices of daily life. He shows how, through this care-centered politics, we can build an ethics of care and a society of cooperation, sharing, and solidarity. Arguing that care is a form of labor, Gottlieb expands the ways we think about home care, child care, elder care, and other care relationships. He links them to the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, immigration, and the militarization of daily life. He also provides perspective on the events of 2020 and 2021 (including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and movements calling attention to racism and inequality) as they relate to a care politics. Care, says Gottlieb, must be universal—whether healthcare for all, care for the earth, care at work, or care for the household, shared equally by men and women. Care-centered politics is about strategic and structural reforms that imply radical and revolutionary change. Gottlieb offers a practical, mindful, yet also utopian, politics of daily life.

Describes how water politics, cars and freeways, and immigration and globalization have shaped Los Angeles, and how innovative social movements are working to make a more livable and sustainable city. Los Angeles—the place without a sense of place, famous for sprawl and overdevelopment and defined by its car-clogged freeways—might seem inhospitable to ideas about connecting with nature and community. But in Reinventing Los Angeles, educator and activist Robert Gottlieb describes how imaginative and innovative social movements have coalesced around the issues of water development, cars and freeways, and land use, to create a more livable and sustainable city. Gottlieb traces the emergence of Los Angeles as a global city in the twentieth century and describes its continuing evolution today. He examines the powerful influences of immigration and economic globalization as they intersect with changes in the politics of water, transportation, and land use, and illustrates each of these core concerns with an account of grass roots and activist responses: efforts to reenvision the concrete-bound, fenced-off Los Angeles River as a natural resource; “Arroyofest,” the closing of the Pasadena Freeway for a Sunday of walking and bike riding; and immigrants'' initiatives to create urban gardens and connect with their countries of origin. Reinventing Los Angeles is a unique blend of personal narrative (Gottlieb himself participated in several of the grass roots actions described in the book) and historical and theoretical discussion. It provides a road map for a new environmentalism of everyday life, demonstrating the opportunities for renewal in a global city.

Is South Los Angeles on the mend? How is it combating the blight of crime, gang violence, high unemployment, and dire poverty? In provocative essays, the contributing authors to "Post-Ghetto" address these questions by pointing out robust signs of hope for the area''s residents--an increase in corporate retail investment, a decrease in homicides, a proliferation of nonprofit service providers, a paradigm shift in violence- and gang-prevention programs, and progress toward a strengthened, more racially integrated labor movement. By charting the connections between public policy and the health of a community, the authors offer innovative ideas and visionary strategies for further urban renewal and remediation. Contributors: Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, Andrea Azuma, Edna Bonacich, Robert Gottlieb, Karen M. Hennigan, Jorge N. Leal, Jill Leovy, Cheryl Maxson, Scott Saul, David C. Sloane, Mark Vallianatos, Danny Widener, Natale Zappia

Since colonial times, water has inspired concern and contention in the United States. Now a member of the powerful Metropolitan Water Board of Southern California tells the fascinating story of the politics and power of water.

After careful research and extensive interiviews, the authors have prepared this compelling and controversial portrait of the Mormon''s organizational structure and economic empire-and the men who control both. Index.

In Reducing Toxics, leading experts address industry, technology, health, and policy issues and explore the potential for pollution prevention at the industry and facility levels. They consider both the regulatory and institutional settings of toxics reduction initiatives, prescribe strategies for developing a prevention framework, and apply these principles in analyzing industry case studies. Among the topics considered are: the evolution of, and limits to, current environmental policy incorporating prevention into production planning and decisionmaking do voluntary programs lead to industry greening or greenwashing? case studies of the chemical, aerosols, radiator repair and electric vehicle industries opportunities for and barriers to pollution prevention Reducing Toxics offers an analytic framework for defining and understanding different approaches in the toxics area and describes the basis for a new policy and industrial decisionmaking construct.

An overview of the key issues of public accountability and water policy innovation that confront urban and agricultural water agencies throughout the country--notably in California where the prospects for future water development have become especially problematic. Focusing on six agencies in the Southern California region, they offer a series of case studies analyzing the issues of water quality, including groundwater contamination and disinfection by-products; reallocation and transfer of existing supplies; and management programs based on pricing changes, the conjunctive use of surface and groundwater supplies, and increased storage capacity aimed at greater efficiencies in stretching those existing supplies.

How Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China deal with such urban environmental issues as ports, goods movement, air pollution, water quality, transportation, and public space. Over the past four decades, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and key urban regions of China have emerged as global cities—in financial, political, cultural, environmental, and demographic terms. In this book, Robert Gottlieb and Simon Ng trace the global emergence of these urban areas and compare their responses to a set of six urban environmental issues. These cities have different patterns of development: Los Angeles has been the quintessential horizontal city, the capital of sprawl; Hong Kong is dense and vertical; China''s new megacities in the Pearl River Delta, created by an explosion in industrial development and a vast migration from rural to urban areas, combine the vertical and the horizontal. All three have experienced major environmental changes in a relatively short period of time. Gottlieb and Ng document how each has dealt with challenges posed by ports and the movement of goods, air pollution (Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and urban China are all notorious for their hazardous air quality), water supply (all three places are dependent on massive transfers of water) and water quality, the food system (from seed to table), transportation, and public and private space. Finally they discuss the possibility of change brought about by policy initiatives and social movements.

Describes Commodore Perry''s expedition to "open" Japan to international trade and places this episode in the context of American imperial ambitions...

New York Mid Century is the story of how the Big Apple emerged as the cultural capital of the postwar world in all fields of creative endeavour art, architecture, design, music, theatre and dance. It was a period of intense cross-fertilization, as poets and critics mixed with artists, dealers, musicians, designers, architects, dancers, and choreographers. Richly illustrated with hundreds of paintings, drawings, photographs, elevations, plans, posters, programmes and ephemera, this is a stirring evocation of a remarkably fertile period in the citys history, the styles and aesthetics of which are now very much back in vogue.

Attorney Sam Weisman is having a bad day. His wife wants a divorce and his law practice is threatened by a hostile takeover. Pulled one way by two hilarious con artists who plan to steal his dream, and another by his family and the real estate professional who has worked her way into his heart, Sam uncovers the wisdom he has so often criticized in his father''s madness as he struggles to hold onto his sanity, his self-esteem, and the woman he loves. Grasping the end of his rope in one hand and the end of his rainbow in the other, he teeters between the abyss ... and the pot of gold!