Liebling at The New Yorker

This collection of essays by New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling provides a sampler of Liebling's wide interests and concerns. As a journalist, he developed an affectionate regard for hustlers, handicappers, and confidence men. His essays on New York provide a loving but eccentric portrait of the life of the city. Book reviews, musings on his youth and on great food, comments on the responsibilities of the press, observations on social customs, and, of course, his reports from Europe just before and after World War II all display the keen intelligence and unquenchable curiosity of the writer. A.J. Liebling has often been regarded as one of the greatest of American journalists. These essays show him at his best, always finding the element of human interest in the most complex story. As Fred Warner notes in the introduction, once we read Liebling, we wish he were still around commenting on the absurdities of our times, writing about our current crop of mountebanks who so abundantly flourish, insisting on the objectivity and integrity of the Press. But most of all we wish he were here to grace us with his marvelous prose.