A powerful short novel that’s vintage Hamill--an evocative, emotionally involving tale of fathers and sons, loss and yearning, forgiveness and approbation--is restored to print.

Brooklyn, 1952. It is Christmastime and a young sailor named Pete is home on leave, temporarily liberated from the specter of war in Korea. He’s back in the old neighborhood, discovering firsthand that the girl he left behind evidently meant what she said in the Dear John letter she sent him. He’s back in the dreary Seventh Avenue apartment that his mother can ill afford to decorate for the holidays. And he’s back facing off with Billy, the gruff Irish factory worker who is his father, yet seems forever a stranger--until, on Christmas Eve, Pete pays his first visit to Rattigan’s, the local bar where his father hangs out, the place where Billy seems most fully alive....

In this widely praised book, Pete Hamill leads us on an unforgettable journey through the city he loves, from the island's southern tip to Times Square, combining a moving memoir of his own days and nights in New York with a passionate history of its most enduring places and people....

One snowy New Year's Day, in the midst of the Great Depression, Dr. James Delaney--haunted by the slaughters of the Great War, and abandoned by his wife and daughter--returns home to find his three-year-old grandson on his doorstep, left by his mother in Delaney's care. Coping with this unexpected arrival, Delaney hires Rose, a tough, decent Sicilian woman with a secret in her past. Slowly, as Rose and the boy begin to care for the good doctor, the numbness in Delaney begins to melt. Recreating 1930s New York with the vibrancy and rich detail that are his trademarks, Pete Hamill weaves a story of honor, family, and one man's simple courage that no reader will soon forget.


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An acclaimed author offers an honest self-portrait of coming of age in a culture that considers drinking an essential part of becoming a man and reveals how it nearly destroyed his ability to write. Reprint. 60,000 first printing. Tour. NYT. ...

This widely praised bestseller is the magical, epic tale of an extraordinary man who arrives in New York in 1740 and remains...forever. Through the eyes of young Cormac O'Connor--granted immortality as long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan--we watch New York grow from a tiny settlement on the tip of an untamed wilderness to the thriving metropolis of today. And through Cormac's remarkable adventures in both love and war, we come to know all the city's buried secrets--the way it has been shaped by greed, race, and waves of immigration, by the unleashing of enormous human energies, and, above all, by hope....

As products of the same urban landscape, Pete Hamill and Frank Sinatra have both been credited with giving the American city a voice. In this widely acclaimed and bestselling appreciation-now available in paperback for the first time-Hamill draws on his intimate experience of the man and the music to evoke the essence of Sinatra, illuminating the singer's art and his legend from the point of view of a confidant and a fan. - May 2003 marks the fifth anniversary of Sinatra's death. - The hardcover edition of Why Sinatra Matters (Little, Brown and Company, 1998), published five months after Sinatra's death, became a national bestseller....

This acclaimed collection presents Hamill's best journalism since 1970--43 hard-hitting, opinionated pieces on what television and crack have in common, why American immigration policy toward Mexico is wrong, what Mike Tyson did to pass time in jail, and what it's like to realize you're middle-aged....

LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT
"When screaming headlines turn out to be based on stories that don't support them, the tale of the boy who cried wolf gets new life. When the newspaper is filled with stupid features about celebrities at the expense of hard news, the reader feels patronized. In the process, the critical relationship of reader to newspaper is slowly undermined."
--from NEWS IS A VERB

NEWS IS A VERB
Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century

"With the usual honorable exceptions, newspapers are getting dumber. They are increasingly filled with sensation, rumor, press-agent flackery, and bloated trivialities at the expense of significant facts. The Lewinsky affair was just a magnified version of what has been going on for some time. Newspapers emphasize drama and conflict at the expense of analysis. They cover celebrities as if reporters were a bunch of waifs with their noses pressed enviously to the windows of the rich and famous. They are parochial, square, enslaved to the conventional pieties. The worst are becoming brainless printed junk food. All across the country, in large cities and small, even the better newspapers are predictable and boring. I once heard a movie director say of a certain screenwriter: 'He aspired to mediocrity, and he succeeded.' Many newspapers are succeeding in the same way."                        ...

This is the magical, epic tale of Cormac O'Connor, who arrives in New York City from Ireland in 1741 and remains, well, forever. For Cormac has been given the gift of immortality, but only on the condition that he never leave the island of Manhattan. Through Cormac's eyes, we watch the city transform from a burgeoning settlement on the tip of an untamed wilderness to the romantic, gaslit world of Edith Wharton's time, and finally to the pulsing, thriving metropolis of the present day. But this is also Cormac's story, as he explores the mysteries of time and immortality, death and loss, sex and love. Though his life is proof of enduring magic, the living of it takes place in a world that can be gloriously, or terribly, real....