Unto The Sons

Gay Talese joined the staff of The New York Times in 1955, and remained there for a decade. During the 1960s and 1970s he contributed many articles to magazines, principally Esquire. He is the author of seven previous books, and has been at work on UNTO THE SONS since the spring of 1981, when he travelled to Italy to begin his research. He was born in Ocean City, New Jersey, in 1932, and now lives in New York City and Ocean City with his wife and their daughters.

UNTO THE SONS is Gay Talese's stirring epic of his family's exodus from a tiny village in southern Italy, caught up in the tide of young men who crossed the Atlantic to America at the end of the 19th century.

A Writer's Life

A luminous book from one of the most influential non-fiction writers of his generation.

Gay Talese was a reporter for The New York Times from 1956 to 1965. Since then he has written for the Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, and other national publications. His books include The Kingdom and the Power, Honor Thy Father, Thy Neighbour's Wife and Unto the Sons. He lives with his wife in New York City.

How has Gay Talese found his subjects? How has he gotten them onto the page? What drives him to write? These are some of the questions at the heart of the narrative that combines memory, reflection, explanation and a satisfying obsession. I his trademark prose - precise, beautifully crafted, elegant - Talese traces the paths his passionate interests have made through his life and writing. He talks about first becoming absorbed in issues of race as a student in Alabama, about covering the civil rights struggle and about a recent interracial wedding in Selma. He reflects on the changing American sexual mores he has written about over the last 50 years, and gives an incisive examination of the lives of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He talks about his legendary Esquire profile of Frank Sinatra - judged by the magazine to be the finest in its long history - and about the ordinary men and women whose stories led to some of his most memorable work. And as he delves into the life of a young female Chinese soccer player, we see his consuming interest in the world in its latest manifestation. In these and other recollections and stories, he gives us a fascinating picture of both the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story, and getting it right. 
 
Candid, humorous, deeply impassioned - a dazzling book about the nature of writing in one man's life, and of writing itself.

Gay Talese

'A masterful New Journalism pioneer ... raises the magazine article to the level of an art form'

And Other Essays

Gay Talese is the father of American New Journalism, who transformed traditional reportage with his vivid scene-setting, sharp observation and rich storytelling. His 1966 piece for Esquire, one of the most celebrated magazine articles ever published, describes a morose Frank Sinatra silently nursing a glass of bourbon, struck down with a cold and unable to sing, like 'Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel - only worse'. The other writings in this selection include a description of a meeting between two legends, Fidel Castro and Muhammad Ali; a brilliantly witty dissection of the offices of Vogue magazine; an account of travelling to Ireland with hellraiser Peter O'Toole; and a profile of fading baseball star Joe DiMaggio, which turns into a moving, immaculately-crafted meditation on celebrity.

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

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Gay Talese

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'The best non-fiction writer in America'

'A masterful New Journalism pioneer ... raises the magazine article to the level of an art form'

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