Reviews

Fame and Obscurity: A Book about New York, a Bridge, and Celebrities on the Edge . . . by Gay Talese

junderscoreb's review

4.0

this guy could make the phone book interesting. to prove it, he has written a fascinating essay about the phone book.

kate_albers's review

5.0

I had to read this book for my literary journalism class in college. I revisit it every year. The stories are tremendous. I aspire to be the kind of writer Talese is.

readers_block's review

4.0

LOVED the first part, liked the second part, lost me at the third.

first part was basically musings on NYC as it was in the 50s and i just loved reading about that. the second part was about the bridge builders and it was also super interesting. the third was small segments on celebrities of the day (frank sinatra, etc). the frank sinatra part was interesting but some of these people were forgotten by time and i honestly didn't know who they were. i abandoned it with like 30 pages to go but it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the whole thing.