Synopses & Reviews
A brilliant journalist takes us on a skewed odyssey through an american populated by idealists and outsiders in his first book, reminiscent of the classic new journalism of Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion.
Writing for Harper's magazine and the New Yorker over the last decade, David Samuels has penned a disillusioned love song to the often amusing and sometimes fatal American habit of self-delusion, reporting from a landscape peopled by salesmen, dreamers, radical environmentalists, suburban hip-hop stars, demolition experts, aging baseball legends, billionaire crackpots, and dog track bettors whose heartbreaking failures and occasional successes are illuminated by flashes of anger and humor.
Including profiles of disillusioned Pacific Northwest radicals and Nevada nuclear test site workers alongside coverage of Pentagon press conferences and the Super Bowl in Detroit, Only Love Can Break Your Heart proves Samuels to be a wonderful inheritor of the great journalistic tradition established by Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion in the 1960s. This first collection of his painstakingly reported and wildly inventive writing reveals the full spectrum of his talents, as well as an unusual sensitivity to both the tragic and comic dissonances bubbling up from the gap between the American promise of endless nirvana and the lives of ordinary citizens who struggle to live out their dreams.
Review
"[A]n excellent essay collection covering topics including Pacific Northwest radicals, demolition experts and Woodstock '99." Nicole Tourtelot, Time Out New York
Review
"Samuels deftly covered Woodstock 1999, Super Bowl XL and Donald Rumsfeld's news conferences at the Pentagon, among other surreal events, with an eye for the disconnect between an ideal and what actually happens. His preface mourns the slow death print magazines are facing, but the collection shows how much life he found in long-form journalism." Jennifer Kay, the Associated Press
Review
"Samuels has a wonderful feeling for the weirdness and truths of self-contained worlds....Joseph Mitchell-meets-Elmore Leonard." Richard Rayner, the Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
"He's a savant when it comes to scene reporting and has a nearly autistic command of minor details and facts. Armed with minutiae, he achieves the glorious breadth and detail of a mural painter." James Hannaham, the Village Voice
Synopsis
Writing for Harper's and the New Yorker over the last decade, David Samuels has penned a disillusioned love song to the often amusing and sometimes fatal American habit of self-delusion, reporting from a landscape peopled by salesmen, dreamers, radical environmentalists, suburban hip-hop stars, demolition experts, aging baseball legends, billionaire crackpots, and dog track bettors whose heartbreaking failures and occasional successes are illuminated by flashes of anger and humor.
Including profiles of Pacific Northwest radicals and Nevada nuclear test site workers alongside coverage of Pentagon press conferences and the Super Bowl in Detroit, Only Love Can Break Your Heart proves Samuels to be a wonderful inheritor of the great journalistic tradition established by Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion in the 1960s. This first collection of his painstakingly reported and wildly inventive writing reveals the full spectrum of his talents, as well as an unusual sensitivity to both the tragic and comic dissonances bubbling up from the gap between the American promise of endless nirvana and the lives of ordinary citizens who struggle to live out their dreams.
About the Author
David Samuels is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.