Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker

Amazon.com

Renata Adler's fulminating, fascinating defense and prosecution of her longtime employer The New Yorker may not be the best book ever written on the subject. Brendan Gill's Here at the New Yorker remains the classic, and Nancy Franklin's profile of Katharine White in Life Stories is more graceful and insightful. But Gone is without doubt the hottest (as ex-editor Tina Brown might say) chronicle of the magazine's history: a scathing portrait of a world with the mad logic of Alice's Wonderland and intrigues as viciously intricate as anything in le Carré.

Adler's narrative zooms like a speedboat through decade after decade of controversy. Still, Gone is essentially a heart-shredding account of the fall of a dynasty--that of longtime editor William Shawn, one of the century's crucial journalistic geniuses. "Mr. Shawn was the father," recalls Adler, "Lillian Ross, the mother. The son was Jonathan Schell; the spirit was J.D. Salinger. This family, it seemed to me, was ferociously judgmental." Yet nobody is more ferocious than the author herself, who was taken into the bosom of this family and stomps all its members to smithereens.

According to Adler, she was one of the lucky few invited into the circle of Mr. Shawn's biological clan, not to mention the parallel world of his mistress and "office wife" Lillian Ross. The author is quick to take Ross to task for her own trash-talking memoir of Shawn. Yet Adler is hardly a whit less destructive in Gone, although she wields the shiv with far greater literary skill. Indeed, those who still worship at the late editor's shrine will be shocked at her portrait of Shawn as a cruel despot who nurtured and destroyed talent according to meticulously articulated, infinitely arbitrary, altogether lunatic rules adjudicated by himself alone. Apparently he had three main responses to criticism: silence, lies, and high-handedness cloaked as high-mindedness. Adler rages at Shawn's hypocrisy, citing his refusal to give his son Wallace Shawn a job on the basis of the magazine's "No Nepotism rule." Not only was this rule nonexistent but the editor rubbed salt in the wound by hiring Schell instead, who happened to be the younger Shawn's college roommate.

Adler notes that the writers who bullied the conflict-averse Shawn tended to prosper, while those who revered him withered away, unpublished. Amazingly, she blames literature's loss of Salinger on Shawn: the ever-elusive author of The Catcher in the Rye "said that the reason he chose not to publish the material he had been working on was to spare Mr. Shawn the burden of having to read, and to decide whether to publish, Salinger writing about sex." Space, alas, prevents full comment on all of Adler's red-hot disclosures. Suffice it to say, however, that like a certain Truman Capote piece she insists on trashing, Adler's memoir of her office family is written in cold blood indeed. --Tim Appelo

Book Description

From a legendary journalist and star writer at The New Yorker -- one of the most revered institutions in publishing -- an insider's look at the magazine's tumultuous yet glorious years under the direction of the enigmatic William Shawn.

Renata Adler went to work at The New Yorker in 1963 and immediately became part of the circle close to editor William Shawn, a man so mysterious that no two biographies of him seem to be about the same person. Now Adler, herself an unrivaled literary force, offers her brilliant take on the man -- and the myth that is The New Yorker -- disputing recent memoirs by Lillian Ross and Ved Mehta along the way.

With her lucid prose, meticulous eye for detail, and genuine love of The New Yorker, Adler re-creates thirty years in its history and depicts Shawn as a man of robust common sense, amazing industry, and editorial genius, who nurtured innumerable major talents (and egos) to produce a magazine that was -- and remains -- unique. Her ensemble cast -- all involved in legendary friendships, feuds, and love affairs -- includes Edmund Wilson, S. N. Behrman, Brendan Gill, Calvin Trillin, Dwight MacDonald, Donald Barthelme, Hannah Arendt, Pauline Kael, S. I. Newhouse, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, and practically everyone of note in and around The New Yorker.

Above and beyond the fascinating literary anecdotes, however, Adler's is a striking narrative that follows the weakening of Shawn's hold over the magazine he loved, his reluctant attempts to find a successor, and the coup by which he was ultimately overthrown. It is a wonderful piece of reporting, full of real-life drama of Shakespearean dimensions, which Shawn himself surely would have loved.

Customer Reviews:

yes, it's designed for a specific audience. So what?.......2005-05-02

Some of your other reviewers seem to take it amiss that Adler's book isn't written for everyone. Its written for people who are familiar with some of the basics of the history of the magazine -- who know and perhaps already have opinions about the works of Truman Capote or Hannah Arendt that first appeared in this magazine before becoming successful and extremely controversial books.

If that sort of book is not one that will interest you then, well ... this is not the book for you. But its rather goofy to criticize the author for having written a book for someone other than yourself, isn't it?

This is an excellent book given its target. Furthermore, I believe that even if I didn't fit the above description of this book, I might have learned a good deal from it about the craft of non-fiction prose. The discussion of the "characteristic structure" of Adam Gopnik's articles, on pp. 243-44, is a little gem of analysis -- and you don't have to have read Gopnik to appreciate it, since most people who read a good deal have reas authors who use the same faulty structure she describes here.

Dry, Awkward, Occasionally Informative.......2005-03-01

I picked up Gone because I had enjoyed Adler's Speedboat and I thought I could learn something about magazine publishing. I did not have a strong opinion one way or another about the current New Yorker.

Having read the book, I'm left to wonder how an author could say so little in such a convoluted manner. Her sentences are frequently atrocious and she needlessly repeats herself, a sin for which she criticizes others. For example, over the course of two pages she writes --

- Non-fiction pieces ... were thought to be in need of cutting.
- This assumption, that every article is too long and requires cutting...
- The notion that cutting means improving...
- This assumption that editing means cutting, and that every piece requires it...
- ... this assumption that the first thing a written work requires is cutting....

Clearly, Gone could have used some tightening of its own.

In addition the book contains one of the most glaring factual errors I've ever come across -- 1976 is given as the date for Nixon's resignation. Obviously Adler knows the correct date; still, this is a serious mistake in a book that focuses so heavily on the importance of editing and fact-checking.

(Incidentally, I think she also misidentified a scene in The Idiot as taking place in The Brothers Karamazov, but I wouldn't swear to it without some fact-checking of my own).

In the end, I did learn a thing or two from Adler's awkward and absolutely humorless book, but it wasn't really worth the effort. Read Brendan Gill's excellent Here at the New Yorker instead.

Beware the hand of fate.......2003-03-18

Imagine this: you are not a writer, do not live in New York City or Connecticut, did not even know that someone named William Shaw edited the New Yorker for a few decades before the "Last Days" of the book's title came upon the magazine, have not heard of or do not remember 95% of the other people mentioned in this book, but had at one time (before the "last days") read the New Yorker often and liked it very much. This is the perch from which I viewed Renata Adler's book and I am sure that I am not such an uncharacteristic reader of the New Yorker as I felt I was while reading her book.

I certainly must have missed many nuances which would have been caught by those more in-the-know about the American magazine business and its personalities. It is for these people, and not for me, an ordinary reader of the New Yorker, for whom this book was written. What was left out, therefore, was the story of why anyone who does not know Adam Gopnik should care.

Renata Adler's book strikes this semiconductor salesman as part rudimentary memoir, part sophisticated, almost sublime, hatchet job on those who she believes tripped the New Yorker, and part tenuous rumination on fate which shows a breathtaking lack of depth even after her 30+ years of writing and contemplation. The book ends with an inscrutable admission of ineffectiveness and a sad page-and-a-half of Ms. Adler's rationalizations about her own choices in life that seem to have very little to do with the New Yorker itself but underline why she cannot seem to make much sense of her experience there.

After reading about so many people I have never heard of, described only in terse yet 'knowing' terms such as "a fine writer" or "the owner", I was left with the impression that automatons ruled on "the 19th floor" (of which building she does not say). What kind of lives these people lead, whether they were married and had kids and believed in anything besides seeing their names in print, is made almost irrelevant. There is almost no real psychological or mythological insight applied to the whole business of a group of 100 or so very talented people putting together the most famous literary weekly in American history.

These people were not robots, surely, but they are systematically relegated to a state of being fixed to their tethers by some indomitable hand of fate, a dubious literary crutch that necessarily goes no where. Along the way, we are lowered into the Kafkaesque world of office politics -- complete with "office wives" and gossip about who will be promoted, who is out and in, etc.. It is the story of every office no matter the enterprise. Its presentation here as so much uncomprehended dross, by so esteemed a writer of our contemporary world as the book's jacket professes Ms. Adler to be, is startling. How can such thoroughly uninteresting people as here described by Renata Adler have created the unity and essence of the wonderful New Yorker?

I would direct the reader to a book by William McGuire, Bollingen, written about another American literary enterprise, which shows a far more insightful and satisfying balance between a good story and the personalities that made it so. Ms. Adler's reportage about the fall of the New Yorker shows a journalist's touch for detail, certainly, but misses the storyteller's touch for making anyone who doesn't already know the story, care about all those people who came and went.

Gone and a good thing too.......2002-12-08

I may be marking myself as the rankest order of philistine, but I never much cared for the old pre-Tina Brown New Yorker. God knows I tried to like it and I often found pieces that I enjoyed, the stories of John Cheever, for example. However, John Cheever did not produce a new story every week and neither did the outstanding authors nurtured in the New Yorker's unique environment. No, at its worst the old New Yorker was under edited and frequently gave too much power to writers to go on for far too long about far too little to make much of an impact. Quite frankly, it frequently bored me and the magazine needed to be shaken up, regardless of what old timers like the author of this book thinks.

I suppose since I do not agree with the basic premise of this work, I might be considered a poor reviewer. There are several good things in this piece, I found the portraits of the figures of the New Yorker and its workings interesting. However, the writing is not as compelling or revealing as "The Years with Ross" or even "Here at the New Yorker" and "Genius in Disguise" (all of which I prefered, though the period and subject matter are vastly different). I would agree with other writers that I think that the prose is underedited and could have benefited with the severe blue pencil.

It is interesting, for a magazine of its limited circulation and appeal, there is far more material about the workings of the New Yorker than any magazine. This is probably a measure of its influence. I hope that this magazine which is is so necessary to fostering new literary talent continues to evolve and hopefully prosper.

The Campaign.......2002-11-13

I cannot imagine, or I'm afraid I can imagine all
too well, why people keep ganging up on this
altogether brilliant and moving book. For more than
two years now, Amazon.com has been publishing a
relentless, vicious,misleading and conformist party
line. (The Customer Review by the gentleman who admits
he has not read the book is a small sign of what is
going on here.)
Journalism's commissars, the pack of writers and editors
whose vanity and solidarity will not permit criticism, even
in a memoir, to go unpunished, have used every forum to try
not just to discredit but to stamp out this book and its
highly individual author.
Name-dropping. Envy. Indeed! How was Adler to write a
memoir, which is also a profound essay, about what was
once an important magazine without mentioning the people
who wrote for it? Some of them were famous. Others were
not. That's where the envy comes in. Adler herself is a
famous and distinguished writer, of fiction, criticism,
literary and political essays.The pack will not stand for
it. A certain level of readers feels threatened as well.
Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker tells us more
about the situation in contemporary letters than anything
except the reaction to it.

Average customer rating:

A strongly recommended prophetic political-military thriller
A strongly recommended prophetic political-military thriller
A strongly recommended prophetic political-military thriller
a book before its time
An excellent, well written spy thriller ...

Last of Days: A Novel by Moris
Rh Value Publishing
Manufacturer: Random House Value Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0517549085
Release Date: 1983-03-23

Customer Reviews:

A strongly recommended prophetic political-military thriller.......2002-10-15

A lot of things are happening in the World around the date I am writing this comment. This book, written in ý83, is visionary in its content: in Middle East turmoil setting, it talks about a radical who believes he is commissioned by God to defend Islam, who happened to be building a nuclear bomb and is about to use it onýsounds familiar? Although the associated political names mentioned in the book changed as in today, the scenario is very much vivid in modern chronicle of the Middle East nations.

This book is 3-dimensional. Usually a typical book reader is the 3rd party, who enjoys the contents of a book delivered as a kind of reading pleasure. Not this one. If this book were a movie, the reader shares the thrill to involve as the Director, who is drawn constructing the camera screens for the plot, the psyche expressions of the people in the book, and the expansive pursue across the deserts of Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, through Australiaýs outback, into Portugalýs airports and Hong Kongýs alleyways, to the holy precincts of Mecca and into the sulfurous moonscape of Ethiopiaýs Danakil Alps.

This book is out-of-print, so search Amazon for used copy---get it when it is still available.

A strongly recommended prophetic political-military thriller.......2002-10-15

A lot of things are happening in the World around the date I am writing this comment. This book, written in '83, is visionary in its content: in Middle East turmoil setting, it talks about a radical who believes he is commissioned by God to defend Islam, who happened to be building a nuclear bomb and is about to use it on...sounds familiar? Although the associated political names mentioned in the book changed as in today, the scenario is very much vivid in modern chronicle of the Middle East nations.

This book is 3-dimensional. Usually a typical book reader is the 3rd party, who enjoys the contents of a book delivered as a kind of reading pleasure. Not this one. If this book were a movie, the reader shares the thrill to involve as the Director, who is drawn constructing the camera screens for the plot, the psyche expressions of the people in the book, and the expansive pursue across the deserts of Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, through Australia's outback, into Portugal's airports and Hong Kong's alleyways, to the holy precincts of Mecca and into the sulfurous moonscape of Ethiopia's Danakil Alps.

Use search engines to search Amazon for a used copy; drop by your neighborhood charity thrift stores, community library to see if they have a copy---by all means get it.

p.s. Considering its relevance and potential appeals to patrons, could Amazon please discuss with the Publisher to revive the edition?

A strongly recommended prophetic political-military thriller.......2002-10-15

This book is 3-dimensional. Usually a typical book reader is the 3rd party, who enjoys the contents of a book delivered as a kind of reading pleasure. Not this one. If this book were a movie, the reader shares the thrill to involve as the Director, who is drawn constructing the camera screens for the plot, the psyche expressions of the people in the book, and the expansive pursue across the deserts of Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, through Australia's outback, into Portugal's airports and Hong Kong's alleyways, to the holy precincts of Mecca and into the sulfurous moonscape of Ethiopia's Danakil Alps.

Use search engines to search ... for a used copy; drop by your neighborhood charity thrift stores, community library to see if they have a copy---by all means get it.

p.s. Considering its relevance and potential appeals to patrons, could ... please discuss with the Publisher to revive the edition?

a book before its time.......2001-11-29

maybe this book would not have been of interest in 1983 ,but almost in a prophetic way it speaks to the world today. a novel of the middle east,with the names and organizations that are a part of the news of today. this is a story of terrorism ,intrigue and war..a war that is new to us but has been going on in the middle east for some time. a romance and a tragic novel of war/loss and prophecy.from the sudan to saudi arabia ,turkey,egypt jordan it covers the politics,the war and the spirit of a people. this book will truly surprise you.

An excellent, well written spy thriller ..........1999-11-19

This is a superb spy novel for any fans of Tom Clancy. What makes it even better is that it precedes Clany by about a decade. The plot may have been done before(Israeli and American Agents have to stop arab terrorists from building a nuclear bomb), and since, but it has never been done better. Excellent characters, including wonderful multidimensional heroes and villians.

Book Description

Reveals the famous last days of Pompeii in great detail. Interesting reading both for the mystic and the scholar.

Customer Reviews:

Both Fascinating and Entertaining.......2005-08-30

This is a cleaver and interesting mystical story of Pompeii - an interesting and well done piece of romantic fiction.

"Last Days" seem like years.......2005-04-19

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton is best known for coming up with the immortal phrase that Snoopy is always typing: "It was a dark and stormy night." Unfortunately, he's never that concise in "Last Days of Pompeii," a bloated and melodramatic historical novel that takes a volcanic eruption and makes it.... boring.

It focuses on the final days of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, which was buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. In particular, it focuses on a virtuous young Roman man, Glaucus, who is stuck in a love quadrangle with a beautiful, equally virtuous young lady, a blind slave girl, and a sinister Egyptian who beguiles the lovely young lady.

In the background is a turmoil of religious and social problems, with a deadly volcano smoldering behind it all. Then, a murder is committed -- and Glaucus is arrested for the crime, and sentenced to be sent into the arena. When Vesuvius blows, will any of them survive?

"The Last Days of Pompeii" is one of those novels that had immense promise. Unfortunately, Bulwer-Lytton turns it into a Roman soap opera. Rather than focusing on the more interesting aspects of Pompeii, Bulwer-Lytton decided to focus on a contrived romantic web of very boring people.

It doesn't help that "Last Days of Pompeii" is also written in a chokingly dense style, very ornate and full of bad poetry. The dialogue is even worse, with lines like, "'With all his conceit and extravagance he is not so rich, I fancy, as he affects to be, and perhaps loves to save his amphorae better than his wit." Okay, whatever. The story might be more palatable, had Bulwer-Lytton not tried too hard -- many Victorian authors managed to communicate their stories without smothering the readers in faux-ancient prose.

Bulwer-Lytton also seems to have been showing off his knowledge of Roman architecture and clothing, since the descriptions of the atrium and triclinium are more complex than any character. He regularly interrupted the narrative just to lecture readers on historical trivia, on everything from medieval necromancy to Italian herbs -- not just annoying, but often irrelevant to the story at hand.

Apparently in the interest of keeping the novel "human," Bulwer-Lytton introduced some romantic tension. Unfortunately, his characters don't act like real people -- really, who would fuss about their love lives while escaping from an erupting volcano that has killed hundreds and destroyed two cities? It's hard to imagine anyone so oblivious and self-absorbed, but the annoying blind slave Nydia apparently can't think of anything else.

Glaucus is a paragon of virtue, despite what Romans of the time were like; he even converts to Christianity for no apparent reason, in keeping with the attempt to make him fit the Victorian ideal. On the flipside, Arbaces is a rather cartoonish -- even slightly racist -- villain, who is just there to make trouble because he wants to.

"The Last Days of Pompeii" is an intriguing idea for a novel, but a flop as Edward Bulwer-Lytton actually wrote it. Too bad the volcano didn't blow a lot sooner.

Well worth reading.......2002-01-11

Though the description is overdone and the plot rather creaking, I was caught up by both the description and the story. Glaucus, an Athenian in Pompeii, loves Ione, as does Arbaces, an Egyptian of evil. Nydia, a blind slave, also loves Glaucus. Arbaces kills Apaecides, brother of Ione, who has become a Christian, and then blames the killing on Glaucus, who has become temporarily crazed by a supposed love potion given him by Nydia--after Nydia took it from Julia, who had gotten it from a witch at Arbaces' urging. To illustarte the fulsome style: "The eyes of the crowd folowed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld, with ineffable dismay, a vast vapour shooting from the summit of Vesuvius, in the form of a gigantic pine-tree, the trunk, blackness,--the branches, fire!--a fire, that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare!" You will not soon forget this awesome book.

A Fascinating Historical Novel.......2001-03-05

This historically accurate novel is filled with exceptional characters and an intriguing plot. Set in the days before the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvious, the novel highlights several stories at once, dealing with romance, adventure, and treachery. Edward Bulwer-Lytton did an excellent job in making the story deep and colorful. It is perfect for students studying Roman culture, as well as anyone looking for a good novel. This book is definitely a classic worth reading!

Get yourself lost in this magical world.......2001-01-27

This is a romantic historical novel, with a convoluted and exciting romantic story of passion, hate, revenge, and adventure. So what? There are many books like that, most of them pretty cheap and predictable. The trick, of course, is the writing. Bulwer Lytton, an early Victorian character with his own peculiarities (he was very interested in the mystical cults of Rome) is an extraordinary storyteller. The plot, as I said, is long to summaryze, but it concerns Glauco, a Greek stud who is beloved by almost every woman in the story; Ione, the Naples girl he loves; Nadia, a blind slave who is -of course- in love with Glauco, and the excellently portrayed Arbaces, a priest of the cult of Isis, the Egyptian goddess. Two other interesting characters are Julia, a rich and mean heiress who is, alas, in love with Glauco, and Salustio, a dissipated and drunken Roman.

The plot revolves around the constant intrigues of the characters, which include magic love-potions, betrayals and heroism. But at the back of the action, there is a volcano about to explode and leave this town covered by tons of dust and volcanic rock. The characters are planning their lives and lusting for passion, without knowing that they have no future. Like some of us, maybe.

Summing up, this novel is great entertainment, intelligent fun. The best, in my opinion, is the re-creation of a lost world, a city full of color and passion, living in full while Destiny works its own way.

Average customer rating:

Provocative and amusing

A Novel Providing Insight into the Publishing Scene

Last Days of What??

THE novel about publishing

the best little novel to come around in a good long while...

The Last Days of Publishing: A Novel
Tom Engelhardt
Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Publishing & Books | Reference | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1558494022

Book Description

Pompeii never had it so bad. Rick Koppes knows a world is ending. The only question is, will he end with it? An editor at Byzantium Press for the last quarter century, he has watched his small, classy publishing house get gobbled up, first by an American publishing giant and then by Multimedia Entertainment, the Hollywood wing of Bruno Hindemann's German media empire. His editing colleagues are being downsized, his authors axed, and in a world where the cultural wallpaper is screaming, he himself hangs on by a fingernail—the latest work of his sole best-selling author, pop psychologist Walter Groth, is racing off bookstore shelves. And that's just where his problems begin—after all, Multimedia is about to make his ex-wife, a publishing executive at another house, his boss, his assistant wants his authors, and a woman who claims her father dropped the bomb on Nagasaki insists he publish her woeful memoir.

Koppes, who came of age in the sixties, is an editor slowly running off the rails. In the six episodes of "The Last Days of Publishing," he refights the Vietnam War in a Chinese restaurant, discovers that the paleontological is political in a natural history museum, mixes it up with a flamboyant literary agent who went underground decades earlier, and encounters a hippie cultural oligarch on the forty-fifth floor of Multimedia's transnational entertainment headquarters.

Tom Engelhardt, himself a publishing veteran, has produced a tumultuous vision of the new world in which the word finds itself hustling for a living. By turns hilarious, sardonic, and poignant, his novel deftly captures the ways in which publishing, which has long put our world between covers but has seldom been memorialized in fiction, is being transformed.

Customer Reviews:

Provocative and amusing.......2007-07-18

This sweet gem of a book sets an ambitious goal of elucidating the means by which editors and publishing houses make the invisible decisions that put books in the hands of the reading public. As the title implies, this is a world on the precipice of several calamities: the growth of multimedia corporations that have plundered small publishing houses, as well as ensured the passing of independent book stores. Even more chilling are the emergent technologies that threaten the very idea of what we have come to think of as a book.If a book is not printed paper between two covers, what will it be, and who will write it and produce it? Will writers still be important to fostering provocative thought, or will other technologies eclipse them?

As a reader I want to read imaginative work of refinement and craft, not simply the dross that feeds the entertainment industry of movie, videogame, and retail spin offs that the megalith corporations want to develop. As diversity in the field shrinks to a few major players who control all aspects of our media, will society be well served? The Last Days of Publishing asks us to reflect on all these troubling notions and paints a rather grim landscape of the future terrain.

The tone of this book is sharp, witty and amusing. Rick Koppes, a veteran editor who knows his way around the New York Publishing scene, uses his instincts to stay one step ahead of the opportunistic underlings, and ambitious sharks circling his desk. He offers a tantalizing portrait of what great purpose there can and should be in the role of the editor.

Our beleaguered hero has brought his art to such a high luster, that alas, when it comes to love, he is more editor than scribe. He is dazzled and bemused by the women in his life, but clearly, not in charge of the plot.He is so appreciative of their splendor, so earnest about wanting to be supportive and nurturing to them, he is nearly emasculated."If I were a book", his ex laments, "You would have loved me!" When he finally picks up his pen and risks the act of creation, he finally gains an active part in his own narrative.

Who knows books better than an editor who has been in the trenches for years? He cannot change an entire industry, but can still be a voice of outrage, dissent and courage. This is a cautionary tale of an extremely likable charcter, from an extremely likable writer. The insider oeuvre is sometimes too smooth and glib for its own good; like an inside joke that can't be appreciated by all. But overall, the intelligence and smartness of the writing is sparkling and fresh enough to catch and hold even the most incognizant outsider.

A Novel Providing Insight into the Publishing Scene.......2005-12-12

This book is a novel written at a time when the book publishing industry was in one of its continuing crisies. It is a novel where the message comes through the discussions and feelings of the anti-hero. His time, and his way of life are ending with the advance of technology and he hasn't/isn't/can't change with it. Everything that has happened in industry in general and publishing in particular has happened to this guy, corporate buyout, downsizing. I particularily like the point of his ex-wife becomming his boss -- that would be enough to drive anyone to severe depression.

With a long history in the publishing industry, Mr. Engelhardt knows the industry of which he writes. He has written a novel that explains better than a dry technical article possibly could about the characters that populate the New York publishing scene. I'd recommend it to anyone in the publishing industry, and to any prospective author that might get a better insight into the world he wants to submit his manuscript.

Of course, the industry has changed, but it hasn't ended. More new books were published last year than any year before. New technologies from print-on-demand to marketing through Amazon have come about and changed the industry.

Last Days of What??.......2004-01-10

Besides being a bit short for a novel, The Last Days of Publishing seems to be missing so many things that could have made for an interesting and readable novel. I have to agree with one of the other reviews, few of the characters are well developed and they seem to come and go, often with minimal explanation. The plot is also weak and presented in out of chronological order, which makes for anticlimactic reading. Much of the information about publishing could easily be gleaned in various magazines and better written books, such as Betsy Lerner's "The Forest for the Trees" as well as the nostalgia for the 60's, like many of Tim O'Brien's novels, especially "July, July" (which isn't even his best novel). Aside from a clever cover, I can't recommend this book.

THE novel about publishing.......2003-10-17

What's been happening in book publishing these last 20 or 30 years is most discouraging. As an antidote, I recommend Tom Engelhardt's vivid, lively novel, which helps us see those depressing developments from the inside. He does it, though, with humor and flair--no preachiness here. Reading it, you'll encounter a fascinating gallery of New York City character types. The scene at the Museum of Natural History is unforgettable in its look at cultural-sexual office politics. The whole book is sardonic fun, and a fast, compelling read. I read the entire thing on a Transatlantic flight.

the best little novel to come around in a good long while..........2003-10-17

Is it a commentary on post-sixties America or some tough love for the publishing biz? Or a bit of both? Lets call it a page-turner with a soul and maybe the best little novel to come around in a good long while.

Average customer rating:

The Kingdom of God and the Last Days
Mercy Publishing / Vineyard Ministries International
Manufacturer: Mercy Publishing / VMI
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000PZXXB8

Product Description

From the Introduction: "This reader is designed to give you a brief introduction to some of the topics which are being covered at the (VMI) conference...the articles or excerpt's from the books do not necessarily reflect the views of the Vineyard. We are attempting to give you some insidght into the various viewpoints which are held by differing groups..." Contributing material is from such authors as: John Walvoord writing about the Kingdom of Heaven, and George Ladd writing about the Kingdom of God. Other authors include, Timothy Weber, Robert G. Clouse, C. Rene Padilla, John Wimber, and many more. Eight Sections are divided as follows: (1) The Kingdom of God, (2) Eschatological Overview, (3) The Kingdom of God and Economics (4) The Kingdom of God and Suffering, (5) The Kingdom of God and Men and Women (6) Reconstructionism (7) Social Justice and the Peace Movement (8) Issues of our Day and a Bibliography.

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The Last Day of New York
Gigi Mahon
Manufacturer: Plume
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Last Days
John M. Mendola
Manufacturer: Psalms For The World, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback

General | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1931274231
Release Date: 2007-02-07

Product Description

The setting, Israel in the 21rst Century, the headlines read Tension in the Middle East . The players, Iran, Turkey, Libya, Ethiopia and the Southern regions of the once was Soviet Union have set their sites to attack Israel! Israel seems to be against all odds and hopeless, yet they overcome their attackers! How can this be? This small country, the thorn in the Middle East has defeated these Mausoleum nations that have come up against them. Impossible you might say! Yet this is what the Bible predicts will happen, for the LORD says that from that day forward, the house of Israel will know that I am their God .

Last Days of Jesus and Beginning of the Church

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Last Days of Jesus and Beginning of the Church
World Bible Publishing
Manufacturer: Nelson Bibles
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

The Last Days of Pompeii and the Disowned: Two Volumes in One

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The Last Days of Pompeii and the Disowned: Two Volumes in One
Edward Bulwer Lytton
Manufacturer: Brainard Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K3J6FC

Product Description

NO PUBLICATION DATE STATED. The date 1834 is from the author's letter to Sir William Gell, published in this volume. 'The Disowned' was probably published in 1852, an advertisement for 'The Disowned' is published in this volume.

Which Church Did Jesus Christ Say He Was Returning For?

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Which Church Did Jesus Christ Say He Was Returning For?
Rick Evans
Manufacturer: Trafford Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1412017955
Release Date: 2006-07-06

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Experience God in 3 different ways in 1 book. Backed by scripture, the lines so often blurred by today's religious leaders are crisply and clearly laid out in this book.

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