A Town Without Time: Gay Talese''s New York

From legendary journalist Gay Talese, a collection of his greatest reporting on New York City.

Along with Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and others, Mr. Talese has been acclaimed as a virtuoso of the novelistic New Journalism. Wall Street Journal

They fly in quietlyunnoticed, like the cats, the ants, the doorman with three bullets in his head, and most of the other offbeat wonders in this town without time. from New York Is a City of Things Unnoticed, Taleses first Esquire story, 1960

For over six decades, Gay Talese has told New York stories. They are the stories of daring bridge builders, disappearing gangsters, intrepid Vogue editors, unassuming doormen whove seen too much. They are set in the star-studded salons of George Plimptons apartment, in the tense newsroom of a still burgeoning New York Times, in an electric studio session with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga recording their debut.

With the wit, elegance, and depth of insight that has long characterized his work, Taleses New York reporting showcases a master of the form at his finest, making intelligible the citys vibrant beating pulse, capturing the charming, the eccentric, and the overlooked. Whether prowling the night streets to discover the social hierarchy of alley cats, or uncovering the triumph and terror of building the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, or plunging into the hidden, sordid world of a recently blown-up apartment building, Talese excavates the city around him with a reporters eye and an artists flair, crafting delightful, profound, indelible portraits of the people who live there. Spanning the 1950s to today, the fourteen pieces in this collection are a time capsule of what New York once was and still isTalese proves time and time again that, even as the city changes, his view of it remains as timeless as ever.