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About This Book
ISBN13: 9781595581884 |
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Only Love Can Break Your Heart (New Press) collects Harper's contributing editor David Samuels's previously published stories depicting a skewed odyssey through an America populated by idealists and outsiders. Samuels's The Runner (New Press), based on one of the most talked-about New Yorker articles from the past decade, tells how James Hogue created a new identity for himself and lied his way into Princeton University, made the track team, and dated a millionaire's daughter before his deception was finally exposed.
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Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
On the morning of March 30, 1988, a police detective named Matt Jacobson arrived at a storage facility in St. George, Utah, with a warrant to search for stolen bicycles. Among the stolen goods and dusty athletic trophies in Locker 100, Jacobson also found some recent correspondence showing that the thief, James Hogue, had been dreaming of a new and better life as a person named Alexi Santana — a self-educated Nevada cowboy who could run a mile in just over four minutes and had applied for admission to some of America's finest universities, including Stanford, Princeton, and Brown.
Thus began a classic American narrative of self-invention that falls somewhere between The Great Gatsby and The Talented Mr. Ripley, Hogue's story — how he fooled the Princeton University admissions department, got straight A's, made the Princeton track team, dated a millionaire's daughter, and was accepted into the elite Ivy Club before his deception was finally exposed — turns out to be both an intensely affecting profile of a dreamer and the limits of his dream, and a striking indictment of the Ivy League meritocracy to which Hogue wanted so badly to belong.
Taking off from his widely read New Yorker article, David Samuels adds substantial new reporting, telling the sad story of Hogue's itinerant life after he was expelled from Princeton and providing fascinating new insights into the Ivy League's most famous impostor.
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cosifan, May 3, 2008 (view all comments by cosifan)
I had read Samuels' original piece about James Hogue in the New Yorker in 2001, and remember thinking then that it would make a great book. Now, seven years later, Samuels has expanded his piece about the petty thief and compulsive runner Hogue into an amazing work -- short but stuffed with obviously hard-won details. Hogue first conned his way into Princeton University and became a top student. He then used his odd charms and talents to bedazzle (and defraud) many citizens of Telluride, Colorado, from his shack across the street from Oprah Winfrey's former home. It's a sad and bitchily amusing story, told by a master.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9781595581884
- Subtitle:
- A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue
- Author:
- Author:
- Publisher:
- New Press
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- Impostors and imposture
- Subject:
- Colorado
- Subject:
- Criminals & Outlaws
- Subject:
- Other Miscellaneous Crimes
- Subject:
- General True Crime
- Subject:
- Runners (Sports)
- Publication Date:
- March 2008
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 176
- Dimensions:
- 8 x 6 in










