Thanks to everyone who joined “live” today with
, author of “The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990,” and with , author of “Crash of the Heavens: The Remarkable Story of Hannah Senesh and the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe’s Jews During World War II.” Both were my colleagues in the 1990s at the Forward newspaper, then edited by Seth Lipsky, which we discuss a bit toward the end of the show.For those who missed it, the video and a very rough, computer-generated, unedited transcript are available above. I started off by telling Mahler how much I had enjoyed the book, both for his skill as a fluid, elegant prose stylist, and how just as a matter of writing craft this book really kept me engaged as a reader in immersive narrative, which I know as both a reader and a writer is not a simple or easy thing to do. I noted that there’s a lot in the book about the various Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky and even more obscure white-collar Wall Street cases—Robert Freeman of Goldman Sachs, Richard Wigton and Kidder—and said Mahler handles the details of all those really deftly and in a way that is appropriately skeptical of prosecutorial overreach and avoiding the common trap of assuming that just because someone is making money on Wall Street they are a criminal. And the other thing I appreciated was that I detected at least once some humor poking through even when it comes to Mahler’s own professional home, the New York Times.
I read a brief passage from “The Gods of New York”: “The media was irresistibly drawn to the audacious Trump. His first New York Times profile, in 1976, compared him to a beloved movie star—’He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford’….(The same profile also described Trump, apparently without irony, as ‘publicity shy.’)”
I asked Mahler both for his take on Zohran Mamdani and for his reaction to a New York Times Book Review review of his book, a review that I found “bizarre.” For his answers, check out the video.
I told Century how his book is so gripping that I have been having trouble prying it away from the other readers in my house. I also appreciated how a map dated 1943-45 in the book is labeled “British Mandatory Palestine (Eretz Israel).” Century talked about how the Jewish paratroopers from British Mandatory Palestine (Eretz Israel) who landed in Europe were actually in some significant ways successful in their mission of rescuing captured British pilots and even helping some European Jews to escape. Century’s book recently got a wonderful review in the Wall Street Journal.
We talked some about the craft of writing on deadline both for newspaper journalism and for books, about the Forward in that era, and about interviewing technique. Also mentioned: Jeffrey Goldberg, Amity Shlaes, Peter Savodnik, Robert Bartley. We had some tech trouble with Century’s video and with patching him in, but all in all it was a fun conversation.
I think the technology is pretty cool that allows me to conduct, with a cellphone and an app, a three-way video interview that in the olden days you needed camera people and audio people and satellite uplinks or fancy studios. For now, at least, the technology is not there to replace reporters and writers like Century and Mahler, but at least it helps them and me create platforms for reaching readers or, in this case, viewers and listeners. Thanks to both writers for participating. If you are looking for a holiday present idea beyond the obvious gift subscription to The Editors, or if you have a gift card to a store that sells books, either or both of these volumes are worth putting on your list.
