Pete Hamill

In Brooklyn in the late 1940s, adolescent Michael Devlin is a dutiful son to his widowed mother and a conscientious altar boy at the parish church. One day, he meets Rabbi Judah Hirsch, a chance encounter that inaugurates a friendship with vast consequences, good and bad, for both of them. Michael lost his father in the war, and the rabbi, a recent immigrant to this country, lost his wife. The threads of their connection widen and strengthen as the...

When a wealthy socialite and her secretary are found murdered in a stately West Village townhouse, a flurry of seemingly unrelated people spring into action.

"A secret agent out of John le Carré...a spoiled priest-hero out of Graham Greene...a high-voltage novel of suspense that is Pete Hamill's own. The man in priest's garb gets out of the elevator at the top floor, leaving the gate ajar. He removes the rifle from under his habit and opens the breech. It's loaded. He closes it and steps to the edge of the roof. St. Peter's Square is spread out before him like a great, colorful lake. There are more people...

The journalist and author recreates the hard-drinking Brooklyn-Irish lifestyle that informed every aspect of his childhood and early career, and eventually destroyed his marriage.

"The Vietnam War has left a deep and lasting impression in American life, from its impact on the men and women who fought in it, to the journalists and photographers who covered it, to the millions of Americans who protested against it or supported it. Thanks to an uncensored press, the world knew and saw more of this war than any in history before or since. The Associated Press made an unprecedented commitment to reporting the conflict: It gathered...