On January 7, 1980, in the run-up to the publication of his landmark bestseller Thy Neighbor's Wife, Gay Talese received an anonymous handwritten letter from a man in Colorado. "Since learning of your long-awaited study of coast-to-coast sex in America," the letter began, "I feel I have important information that I could contribute to its contents or to contents of a future book." The man went on to tell Talese an astonishing secret: he had bought a motel outside Denver to satisfy his voyeuristic desires. Underneath the roof of his motel, the man had built an "observation platform," fitted with vents, through which he could watch his unwitting guests. Unsure what to make of this confession, Talese traveled to Colorado where he met the man--Gerald Foos--and verified his story in person. But because Foos insisted on remaining anonymous, preserving for himself the privacy he denied his guests, Talese filed his reporting away, assuming the story would remain untold. Over the ensuing years, Foos occasionally reached out to Talese to fill him in on the latest developments in his life. He also sent Talese hundreds of pages of notes on his guests and their habits, work that Foos believed made him a pioneering researcher into American society and sexuality. America in microcosm had passed through the Voyeur's motel, and he witnessed and recorded the harsh effects of the war in Vietnam, the upheaval in gender roles, the decline of segregation, and much more. But Foos continued to insist on anonymity. Now, after thirty-five years, he's ready to go public and Gay Talese can finally tell his story. The Voyeur's Motel is an extraordinary work of narrative journalism, at once a portrait of one complicated man, and an examination of secret lives and shifting mores in a culturally-evolving country.

A selection of witty and provocative essays from the father of New Journalism, Gay Talese's Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and Other Essays is published in Penguin Modern Classics. 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 hellraising actor Peter O'Toole; and a profile of fading baseball star Joe DiMaggio, which turns into a moving, immaculately-crafted meditation on celebrity. Gay Talese (b. 1932) is an American author. He wrote for The New York Times in the early 1960s and helped to define literary journalism or 'new nonfiction reportage', also known as New Journalism. His most famous articles are about Joe DiMaggio, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. He lives in New York with his wife, Nan Talese. If you enjoyed Frank Sinatra has a Cold, you might like George Orwell's Essays, also published in Penguin Modern Classics. 'The best American prose of the second half of the twentieth century' Atlantic Monthly 'The best non-fiction writer in America' Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather 'A masterful New Journalism pioneer ... raises the magazine article to the level of an art form' Los Angeles Times

The provocative classic work newly updated

An intimate personal odyssey across America's changing sexual landscape

When first published, Gay Talese's 1981 groundbreaking work, "Thy Neighbor's Wife," shocked a nation with its powerful, eye-opening revelations about the sexual activities and proclivities of the American public in the era before AIDS. A marvel of journalistic courage and craft, the book opened a window into a new world built on a new moral foundation, carrying the reader on a remarkable journey from the Playboy Mansion to the Supreme Court, to the backyards and bedrooms of suburbia--through the development of the porn industry, the rise of the "swinger" culture, the legal fight to define obscenity, and the daily sex lives of "ordinary" people. It is the book that forever changed the way Americans look at themselves and one another.

"Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel-only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence." - Gay Talese In the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese set out for Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to write a major profile on Frank Sinatra. When he arrived, he found the singer and his vigilant entourage on the defensive: Sinatra was under the weather, not available, and not willing to be interviewed. Undeterred, Talese stayed, believing Sinatra might recover and reconsider, and used the meantime to observe the star and to interview his friends, associates, family members, and hangers-on. Sinatra never did grant the one-on-one, but Talese's tenacity paid off: his profile Frank Sinatra Has a Cold went down in history as a tour de force of literary nonfiction and the advent of the New Journalism. In this illustrated edition, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold is published with an introduction by Talese, reproductions of his manuscript pages, and correspondence. Interwoven are photographs from the legendary lens of Phil Stern, the only photographer granted access to Sinatra over four decades, as well as from top photojournalists of the '60s, including John Bryson, John Dominis, and Terry O'Neill. The photographs complement Talese's character study, painting an incisive portrait of Sinatra in the recording studio, on location, out on the town, and with the eponymous cold, which reveals as much about a singular star persona as it does about the Hollywood machine.

The inner workings of a writer's life, the interplay between experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life--the zeal for the truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism and best-sellerdom and acclaim for his revelatory books about "The New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power), "the Mafia "(Honor Thy Father), "the sex industry "(Thy Neighbor's Wife), "and, focusing on his own family, the American immigrant experience "(Unto the Sons). "
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How has Talese found his subjects? What has stimulated, blocked, or inspired his writing? Here are his amateur beginnings on his college newspaper; his professional climb at "The New York Times; "his desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him to magazine writing at "Esquire "and then to books. We see his involvement with issues of race from his student days in the Deep South to a recent interracial wedding in Selma, Alabama, where he once covered the fierce struggle for civil rights. Here are his reflections on the changing American sexual mores he has written about over the last fifty years, and a striking look at the lives--and their meaning--of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He takes us behind the scenes of his legendary profile of Frank Sinatra, his writings about Joe DiMaggio and heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, and his interview with the head of a Mafia family.
But he is at his most poignant in talking about the ordinary men and women whose stories led to his most memorable work. In remarkable fashion, he traces the history of a single restaurant location in New York, creating an ethnic mosaic of onerestaurateur after the other whose dreams were dashed while a successor's were born. 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, Talese gives us a fascinating picture of both the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story. He makes clear that every one of us represents a good one, if a writer has the curiosity to know it, the diligence to pursue it, and the desire to get it right.
Candid, humorous, deeply impassioned--a dazzling book about the nature of writing in one man's life, and of writing itself.

"From the Hardcover edition."

"An Italian ROOTS." The Washington Post Book World
At long last, Gay Talese, one of America's greatest living authors, employs his prodigious storytelling gifts to tell the saga of his own family's emigration to America from Italy in the years preceding World War II. Ultimately it is the story of all immigrant families and the hope and sacrifice that took them from the familiarity of the old world into the mysteries and challenges of the new.


From the Paperback edition.

"Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel-only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence." - Gay Talese In the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese set out for Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to write a major profile on Frank Sinatra. When he arrived, he found the singer and his vigilant entourage on the defensive: Sinatra was under the weather, not available, and not willing to be interviewed. Undeterred, Talese stayed, believing Sinatra might recover and reconsider, and used the meantime to observe the star and to interview his friends, associates, family members, and hangers-on. Sinatra never did grant the one-on-one, but Talese's tenacity paid off: his profile Frank Sinatra Has a Cold went down in history as a tour de force of literary nonfiction and the advent of the New Journalism. In this illustrated edition, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold is published with an introduction by Talese, reproductions of his manuscript pages, and correspondence. Interwoven are photographs from the legendary lens of Phil Stern, the only photographer granted access to Sinatra over four decades, as well as from top photojournalists of the '60s, including John Bryson, John Dominis, and Terry O'Neill. The photographs complement Talese's character study, painting an incisive portrait of Sinatra in the recording studio, on location, out on the town, and with the eponymous cold, which reveals as much about a singular star persona as it does about the Hollywood machine.

"A landmark in the field of writing about journalism." The Nation
The classic inside story of The New York Times, the most prestigious, and perhaps the most powerful, of all American newspapers. Bestselling author Talese lays bare the secret internal intrigues behind the tradition of front page exposes in a story as gripping as a work of fiction and as immediate as today's headlines.

Cultural icons like Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway, Peter OToole; politicians like Kennedy, Fidel Castro; and sportsmen like Joe DiMaggio, Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, come in and out of these pages through intimate family memories or the humble beginnings of this author as a journalist. The common link remains the same: the unequaled style of Talese.