Synopses & Reviews
Toward the end of 1964, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge-linking the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island-was completed. Fifty years later, it remains an engineering marvel. At 13,700 feet (more than two and a half miles), it is still the longest suspension bridge in the United States and the sixth longest in the world.
Gay Talese, then early in his career at the New York Times, closely followed the construction, and soon after the opening of this marvel of human ingenuity and engineering, he chronicled the human drama of its completion-from the construction workers high on the beams to the backroom dealing that displaced whole neighborhoods to make way for the bridge. Now in a new, beautifully packaged edition featuring dozens of breathtaking photos and architectural drawings, The Bridge remains both a riveting narrative of politics and courage and a demonstration of Talese's consummate skills as a reporter and storyteller. His memorable narrative will help celebrate the bridge's fiftieth anniversary and captivate a new generation of readers.
Review
"Mr. Talese has written a vivid, highly readable story of the building of the bridge. He has described movingly the people caught up in the project—the engineers, the workers, the displaced, and he sees the bridge as a human rather than a mechanical achievement . . . imparting drama and romance to this bridge-building story." —
The New York Times Book Review"This book has the charm of Max Miller's I Cover the Waterfront and the precision of Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon." —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Only a writer in love with his subject could have produced so charming a narrative about a bridge. There are many stories within the story of The Bridge. All are worth reading." —Houston Post
"Talese tells warm, funny, and tragic stories of men, women, steel, and concrete. This book is fine reading." —Denver Post
Synopsis
On the fiftieth anniversary of the completion of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, a new and beautifully produced, heavily illustrated edition of Gay Taleses classic book with a new introduction by the author.
Synopsis
With a new preface and afterword by the author and drawings by Lili Rethi.
Towards the end of 1964, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge—linking the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island with New Jersey—was completed. It remains an engineering marvel almost forty years later—at 13,700 feet (more than two and a half miles), it is still the longest suspension bridge in the United States and the sixth longest in the world. Gay Talese, then early in his career at the New York Times, closely followed the construction, and soon after the opening his book The Bridge appeared. Never before in paperback, it remains both a riveting human drama of politics and courage, and a demonstration of Taleses consummate skills as a reporter and storyteller. His memorable narrative—accompanied, as then, by the astonishingly beautiful working drawings of Lili Rethi—will now captivate a new generation of readers.
About the Author
Gay Talese is known for his daring pursuit of "unreportable" stories, for his exhaustive research, and for his formally elegant style. These qualities, arguably, are the touchstones of the finest literary journalism. Talese is often cited as one of the founders of the 1960s "New Journalism," but he has always politely demurred from this label, insisting that his "stories with real names" represent no reformist crusade, but rather his own highly personal response to the world as an Italian-American "outsider."