Pete Hamill is a veteran New York journalist and novelist. He's the author of numerous books, including Downtown: My Manhattan, Diego Rivera and A Drinking Life. His nine novels include Snow in August and Forever, both of which were New York Times bestsellers. He is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence and Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professor of Journalism at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
A Drinking Life
Thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list
A Killing for Christ
Hamill steps behind the public face of the modern Church and sees the dark grottoes within. He examines the hidden hearts of priests and prostitutes, the torturous windings of perverted thinking, the orgies of the bored and the bitter.
Diego Rivera
"The political passions that drove so much of his public art are now dead," Hamill wrote of Diego Rivera. "But to my eye, the best of his art seems oddly fresher today than when those ideas were still relevant to the way people lived. It's as if the art has been freed from the prison of its context."
Dirty Laundry
A former crack columnist for a New York City paper, Sam Brisco, gets a terrified phone call from an old flame. Before he can get to her, she is murdered, and Sam is plunged into a strange case involving a couple of corpses, a guy who stole a bank and a surprising pay-off.
Downtown: My Manhattan
A non-fiction account of Hamill's love affair with New York. "Wherever he leads, in this beautifully written, sharply observed and heartfelt guide and memoir, readers should simply follow." - William Grimes, The New York Times Book Review
Flesh and Blood
Turned into a TV drama; one of television's first portrayals of incest. The National Federation for Decency led a protest.
Forever
"We live in an age of broken hearts. But Hamill, like a great musician, hits just the right notes." - bookreporter.com
Loving Women
"You somehow settle comfortably into a world that was - where sex is uninhibited and evil takes the form of lynch mobs and overbearing superiors." - The New York Times Book Review
North River
"Hamill has crafted a beautiful novel, rich in New York City detail and ambience, that showcases the power of human goodness and how love, in its many forms, can prevail in an unfair world." - Publishers Weekly
Piecework: Writings on Men & Women, Fools and Heroes, Lost Cities, Vanished Calamities and How the Weather Was
Biographical sketches of such diverse characters as boxer Mike Tyson, Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez, Sinatra, mobster John Gotti, General Colin Powell and Jackie Gleason.
Snow in August
Four months on the New York Times bestseller list
Subway Series
Spans the generations of baseball in New York, from Lawrence Ritter's recollection of attending his first World Series game in the subway series of 1936 to Peter Knobler's reflection on bringing his son to the Series in 2000.
The Deadly Piece
The piece of the title does not refer to heat; it is a fabulous piece of jewellery, the breastplate of Aaron, lost when the Babylonians took the Jews into captivity.
The Gift
An autobiographical novel about pain and love, a deep rift between father and son, and the healing of that rift against a background of the yuletide, bleak tenement houses, festive Irish bars and plaintive songs. Made into a TV movie.
The Guns of Heaven
On a visit to Northern Ireland, newspaper reproter 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- for Briscoe, and his 11-year-old daughter.
The Invisible City: A New York Sketchbook
Stories of New York.
Tokyo Sketches
"His characters are real, the situations unique, & just when you think the story is going to turn out a trite way it goes in another direction." --Cosmoetica
Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection
The Hechinger Collection celebrates the ubiquity of tools in our lives with works that incorporate tools and hardware in their imagery.
Why Sinatra Matters
"What a perfect match: the world's greatest 'saloon singer' eulogized superbly by the author of The Drinking Life"--Kirkus Reviews