{"product_id":"book-bood","title":"Cast of Characters","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe professional and personal lives of the pioneers of an enduring magazine, the \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom its birth in 1925 to the early days of the Cold War, the\u003ci\u003e New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e slowly but surely took hold as the country's most prestigious, entertaining, and informative general-interest periodical. In \u003ci\u003eCast of Characters\u003c\/i\u003e, Thomas Vinciguerra paints a portrait of the magazine's cadre of charming, wisecracking, driven, troubled, and brilliant, writers and editors.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe introduces us to Wolcott Gibbs, theater critic, all-around wit, and author of an infamous 1936 parody of \u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e magazine. We meet the demanding and eccentric founding editor Harold Ross, who would routinely tell his underlings, \"I'm firing you because you are not a genius,\" and who once mailed a pair of his underwear to Walter Winchell, who had accused him of preferring to go bare-bottomed under his slacks. Joining the cast are the mercurial, blind James Thurber, a brilliant cartoonist and wildly inventive fabulist; and the enigmatic E. B. White-an incomparable prose stylist and Ross' favorite son-who married the\u003ci\u003e New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e's formidable fiction editor, Katharine Angell. Then there is the dashing St. Clair McKelway, who was married five times and claimed to have no fewer than twelve personalities, but was nonetheless a superb reporter and managing editor alike. Many of these characters became legends in their own right, but Vinciguerra also shows how, as a group, the\u003ci\u003e New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e's inner circle brought forth a profound transformation in how life was perceived, interpreted, written about, and published in America.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCast of Characters\u003c\/i\u003e may be the most revealing―and entertaining―book yet about the unique personalities who built what Ross called not a magazine but a \"movement.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blackstone Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49300964409648,"sku":"BDbood","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio CD","offer_id":49300964442416,"sku":"ZEbood","price":34.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio MP3-CD [ZM]","offer_id":49300964475184,"sku":"ZMbood","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/bood-Square-cover.jpg?v=1775790522","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-bood","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}