Pete Hamill Books In Order

Novels

  1. A Killing for Christ (1968)
  2. The Gift (1973)
  3. Flesh and Blood (1977)
  4. Dirty Laundry (1978)
  5. The Deadly Piece (1979)
  6. The Guns of Heaven (1984)
  7. Loving Women (1989)
  8. Snow in August (1997)
  9. Forever (2002)
  10. North River (2007)
  11. Tabloid City (2011)

Collections

  1. Tokyo Sketches (1995)
  2. The Christmas Kid (2012)
  3. The Invisible City (2013)

Plays

  1. Doc (1971)

Non fiction

  1. Irrational Ravings (1971)
  2. News is a Verb (1988)
  3. A Drinking Life (1994)
  4. Piecework (1996)
  5. The Times Square Gym (1996)
  6. Why Sinatra Matters (1998)
  7. Diego Rivera (1999)
  8. New York Exposed (2001)
  9. Mexico (2004)
  10. Downtown (2004)
  11. New York (2007)
  12. They Are Us (2010)

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Pete Hamill Books Overview

The Gift

Originally published in 1973 and long unavailable, The Gift returns to print in a paperback edition that features a bound in reading group guide. This short novel portends the great literary promise that Pete Hamill would eventually fulfill in such bestsellers as A Drinking Life, Snow in August, Forever, Downtown, and North River, to name just a few.

The Guns of Heaven

TOMORROW, THE STRUGGLE WILL BE FOUGHT ON OUR STREETS On a visit to Northern Ireland, newspaper reporter Sam Briscoe meets with a mysterious IRA leader and agrees to deliver an envelope to his supporters in New York City. It’s a decision with grave consequences not just for Briscoe, but for his 11 year old daughter as well. Because the bloody Irish conflict is about to come to the streets of New York, and Briscoe is the only man standing in its way

Snow in August

Brooklyn, 1947. The war veterans have come home. Jackie Robinson is about to become a Dodger. And in one close knit working class neighborhood, an eleven year old Irish Catholic boy named Michael Devlin has just made friends with a lonely rabbi from Prague. Snow in August is the story of that unlikely friendship and of how the neighborhood reacts to it. For Michael, the rabbi opens a window to ancient learning and lore that rival anything in Captain Marvel. For the rabbi, Michael illuminates the everyday mysteries of America, including the strange language of baseball. But like their hero Jackie Robinson, neither can entirely escape from the swirling prejudices of the time. Terrorized by a local gang of anti Semitic Irish toughs, Michael and the rabbi are caught in an escalating spiral of hate for which there’s only one way out a miracle…
. Deeply affecting and wonderfully evocative of old New York, Snow in August is a brilliant fable for our time and all time and another triumph for Pete Hamill.

Forever

From the bestselling author of Snow in August and A Drinking Life comes this magical, epic tale of an extraordinary man who arrives in New York City in 1740 and remains…
Forever. From the shores of Ireland, Cormac O’Connor sets out on a fateful journey to avenge the deaths of his parents and honor the code of his ancestors. His quest brings him to the settlement of New York, seething with tensions between English and Irish, whites and blacks, British and ‘Americans,’ where he is swept up in a tide of conspiracy and violence. In return for aiding an African shaman who was brought to America in chains, Cormac is given an otherworldly gift: He will live Forever as long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan. Cormac comes to know all the buried secrets of Manhattan the way it has been shaped by greed, race, and waves of immigration, by the unleashing of enormous human energies, and above all, by hope. Through it all, Cormac must fight a force of evil that returns relentlessly in the scions of a single family whose path first crossed his in Ireland. As he searches out these blood enemies, he must watch everyone he touches slip away. And so he seeks the one who can change his fate, the mysterious dark lady who alone can free him from the blessing and the curse of his long life. Drawing on Pete Hamill’s bone deep knowledge of New York City, Forever is his long awaited masterpiece, a Shakespearean evocation of the mysteries of time and death, sex and love, character and place. It is both an unforgettable drama and a timeless triumph of storytelling.

North River

It is 1934, and New York City is in the icy grip of the Great Depression. With enormous compassion, Dr. James Delaney tends to his hurt, sick, and poor neighbors, who include gangsters, day laborers, prostitutes, and housewives. If they can’t pay, he treats them anyway.

But in his own life, Delaney is emotionally numb, haunted by the slaughters of the Great War. His only daughter has left for Mexico, and his wife Molly vanished months before, leaving him to wonder if she is alive or dead. Then, on a snowy New Year’s Day, the doctor returns home to find his three year old grandson on his doorstep, left by his mother in Delaney’s care. Coping with this unexpected arrival, Delaney hires Rose, a tough, decent Sicilian woman with a secret in her past. Slowly, as Rose and the boy begin to care for the good doctor, the numbness in Delaney begins to melt.

Recreating 1930s New York with the vibrancy and rich detail that are his trademarks, Pete Hamill weaves a story of honor, family, and one man’s simple courage that no reader will soon forget.

Tabloid City

On a cold January night in a stately townhome in New York City’s West Village, two women a wealthy socialite and her secretary have been killed. Over the course of the next day, their shocking deaths will illuminate connections between men and women who could not be more different from one another, though they call the same metropolis home. From the gruff editor in chief of the city’s last afternoon daily to the self made advertising exec; from the NYPD sergeant to the Wall Street conman; from the angry young extremist to the Iraq vet struggling to come to terms with his sacrifices, Pete Hamill captures the voices and experiences of his fellow New Yorkers with his trademark blend of compassion and unflinching honesty. For some of these men and women, the city is a proving ground. For others it is a decadent playground. For still others it is steeped in memories a historic city eclipsed by modern times. At once a nostalgic hymn to old New York and a gripping, cinematic portrait of the complex city of today, Tabloid City is as exhilarating as New York itself.

News is a Verb

LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT’When screaming headlines turn out to be based on stories that don’t support them, the tale of the boy who cried wolf gets new life. When the newspaper is filled with stupid features about celebrities at the expense of hard news, the reader feels patronized. In the process, the critical relationship of reader to newspaper is slowly undermined.’ from News is a VerbNews is a VerbJournalism at the End of the Twentieth Century’With the usual honorable exceptions, newspapers are getting dumber. They are increasingly filled with sensation, rumor, press agent flackery, and bloated trivialities at the expense of significant facts. The Lewinsky affair was just a magnified version of what has been going on for some time. Newspapers emphasize drama and conflict at the expense of analysis. They cover celebrities as if reporters were a bunch of waifs with their noses pressed enviously to the windows of the rich and famous. They are parochial, square, enslaved to the conventional pieties. The worst are becoming brainless printed junk food. All across the country, in large cities and small, even the better newspapers are predictable and boring. I once heard a movie director say of a certain screenwriter: ‘He aspired to mediocrity, and he succeeded.’ Many newspapers are succeeding in the same way.’

A Drinking Life

20 years after his last drink Pete Hamill looks back on his early life. As a child during the depression and World War II he learnt that drinking was to be an essential part of being a man, it was only later he discovered its ability to destroy lives.

Piecework

Veteran journalist Pete Hamill has never covered just politics. Or just sports. Or just the entertainment business, the mob, foreign affairs, social issues, the art world, or New York City. He has in fact written about all these subjects, and many more, in his years as a contributor to such national magazines as Esquire, Vanity Fair, and New York, and as a columnist at the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Village Voice, and other newspapers. Seasoned by more than thirty years as a New York newspaperman, Hamill writes on an extraordinarily wide variety of topics in powerful language that is personal, tough minded, clearheaded, always provocative. Piecework is a rich and varied collection of Hamill’s best writing since 1970, on such diverse subjects as what television and crack have in common, why winning isn’t everything, stickball, Nicaragua, Donald Trump, why American immigration policy toward Mexico is all wrong, Brooklyn’s Seventh Avenue, and Frank Sinatra, not to mention Octavio Paz, what it’s like to realize you’re middle aged, Northern Ireland, New York City then and now, how Mike Tyson spent his time in prison, and much more. This collection proves him once again to be among the last of a dying breed: the old school generalist, who writes about anything and everything, guided only by passionate and boundless curiosity. Piecework is Hamill at his very best.

Why Sinatra Matters

In this unique tribute, veteran journalist and award winning author Pete Hamill remembers and pays tribute to the legacy of Frank Sinatra. Why Sinatra Matters draws on Hamill’s years long friendship with Sinatra; this is not an impersonal magazine issue full of photos or a quickie bio, but a personal, thoughtful testimony which is sure to pique interest.

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera 1886 1957 was the greatest Mexican painter of the century an audacious muralist, voracious lover, and ardent leftist who befriended Pablo Picasso, married Frida Kahlo, and quarreled with Leon Trotsky. Pete Hamill, a best selling novelist and one of America’s most esteemed journalists, gives us an extraordinary book, now in paperback, on Rivera’s life and art. Hamill, once a young art student in Mexico City, shows how, despite the political passions, Rivera created a body of work that still astonishes. Filled with superb reproductions and documentary photographs, Diego Rivera is a tour de force.

‘In this tight and balanced look at Mexican painter Diego Rivera, Pete Hamill focuses on Rivera’s work. While Hamill touches on Rivera’s unpredictable temperament…
notably displayed in his infamous marriage to Frida Kahlo…
this gorgeous book devotes itself to Rivera’s development as artist and political icon…
. Hamill deftly shows why Rivera deserves to be remembered as one of the great painters of the twentieth century.’ The Progressive

‘A fascinating book…
Hamill writes authoritatively about Rivera’s work and diverse styles.’ The New York Times Book Review

New York Exposed

The New York Daily News is one of New York City’s most widely read newspapers. Its front page headlines and provocative photographs never fail to captivate its daily audience or entice the nosy, neighboring subway rider. This book, now available as an Abradale, is a collection of 320 duotone photographs, spanning 80 years, from the newspaper’s unparalleled archives. Organized chronologically by decade, the photographs capture all of the heart and guts of the big city, from crammed sports stadiums and glamorous nightclubs to mean streets and treacherous rooftops. An introduction by Pete Hamill, best selling author and former editor in chief of the Daily News, adds to the dramatic impact of the photographs, powerfully bringing the history of one of the greatest cities in the world to life.

Mexico

Agust n Victor Casasola photographed everyone of consequence in Mexico at the time of the revolution, from Francisco Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and the exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky to artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. For this splendid collection of Casasola’s work, the noted American author Pete Hamill has written a rich essay on the photographer and the Mexico he pictured so well. Essay by Pete Hamill. Hardcover, 9.5 x 12. 75 in./220 pgs

Downtown

A rich historical and personal portrait of Manhattan from the bestselling writer who is for many the living embodiment of the city. Manhattan, the keystone of New York City, is a place of ghosts and buried memory. One can still see remnants of the British colony, the mansions of the robber barons, and the speakeasies of the 1920s. These are the places that have captivated the imaginations of writers for centuries. Now Pete Hamill brings his unique knowledge and deep love of the city to a New York chronicle like no other. During his 40 years as a newspaperman, Pete Hamill has been getting to know Manhattans neighborhoods and inhabitants intimately, bearing witness to their greatest triumphs and tragedies. From the winding, bohemian streets of Greenwich Village to the seedy alleyways of the meatpacking district and to the weathered cobblestones of South Street Seaport, Hamill peels back the layers of history to reveal the citys past, present, and future. More than just history or reporting, this is an elegy by a native son who has lived through some of New Yorks most historic moments, and who continues to call this magnificent, haunted city his home.

New York

The islands that form New York City are far more subtle and varied than the five that can be seen from the air. In this spectacular portrait of the great metropolis, renowned photographer Jake Rajs juxtaposes iconic views the Empire State Building, the Hudson River skyline, the Brooklyn Bridge with unheralded neighborhoods and hidden places throughout the five boroughs. Pete Hamill’s literary portrait perfectly complements Rajs’s visual presentation. This lively and compelling view traces the history of the city from its beginnings as an Indian hunting and fishing ground to the early years of settlement by immigrants from all corners of the world to the numerous and overlapping islands that now make up the city as a whole. First published in a deluxe edition in 1998, this unique presentation is now available to all who are eager to explore the city that fascinates the world.

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