Praise

“The most important nonfiction writer of his generation, the person whose work most influenced at least two generations of other reporters.”
–David Halberstam, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian

“He is a reporter, true enough, but one with the eyes and ears of an artist.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“The best non-fiction writer in America.”
–Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather

“Talese . . . as he has proven again and again with his books, is a master of the narrative art.”
–William Kennedy, author of Ironweed and Roscoe

“Talese’s . . . prose [is] distinctive for its precision, its silkiness, its attention to important details that lesser journalists routinely overlooked.”
–Alan Moore, author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta

“[Talese’s] legacy is twofold. First, he is the indefatigable reporter whose books and articles are the product of extensive research. Second, he is the poet of the commonplace, the writer who demonstrated that one could write great literary nonfiction about the `ordinary’ . . . Talese . . . slowly drills down through the mundane subterranean reality of human existence to its `fictional’ core.”
–Robert S. Boynton, author of The New New Journalism

“Few writers research as thoroughly or ardently as Talese . . . His books are so thorough, and so passionately researched, that they seem to reproach ordinary journalists for a certain tepidness and restraint in their approach.”
–Paris Review

“A masterful New Journalism pioneer . . . raises the magazine article to the level of an art form.”
–Los Angeles Times

“In a culture of success and celebrity, Gay Talese has always found his best subjects in failure and decline: Joe DiMaggio in his lonely eclipse; Joshua Logan in the midst of terrible depressions; Floyd Patterson struggling to express what it is to be knocked flat in front of a filled stadium. Talese’s lapidary style and impeccable reporting standards have endured far better than the work of some of his more histrionic New Journalism contemporaries.”
–New Yorker

“Talese is a masterful writer, whose seamless, thought-provoking prose carries the reader as effortlessly as a gondolier in a Venice canal.”
–San Diego Union-Tribune

“[Gay Talese’s] quirky, personal nonfiction, in which the author is very much a presence, helped spawn a whole new approach to feature writing.”
–Booklist

“Mr. Talese’s insight will do more to help us understand the criminal than any amount of moral recrimination.”
–Times Literary Supplement

“Talese finds the poignant in the everyday”
–Publishers Weekly

“Talese is a shining example for all writers.”
–Times (Indianapolis)

“A masterpiece of cultural observation.”
–Paris Review, on Thy Neighbor’s Wife

“Every man who reads it will recognize himself. Every woman will discover, perhaps for the first time, the secret fantasies and public privations, the loneliness and passionate lusts, of most men.”
–Chicago Sun-Times, on Thy Neighbor’s Wife

“First-rate . . . Well-told stories, their social message cumulative: a drastically transformed American sexuality has emerged during [the] past decades”
–New York Times Book Review, on Thy Neighbor’s Wife

“Talese does not proselytize, he informs . . . Readable and thoroughly entertaining.”
–Vogue, on Thy Neighbor’s Wife

“Engrossing and provocative.”
–Library Journal, on Thy Neighbor’s Wife