By Alex Belth Esquire Classic August 2016 Robert Benton is best known as a screenwriter (Bonnie and Clyde, What’s Up Doc?,and Superman), and director (The Late Show, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Nobody’s Fool), but before he lost it at the movies, Benton was the art...
By Alex Belth Esquire Classic 2016 Chip Brown has long been one of the finest magazine writers we have. An exacting reporter and a deft stylist, Brown began under the tutelage of David Maraniss and Bob Woodward at The Washington Post and flourished as feature writer...
By Alex Belth Esquire Classic October 26, 2016 The story of Emmet Till is embedded in our public consciousness as one of the most notorious hate crimes of the century. What is lesser known—and what novelist John Edgar Wideman tackles with candor and humility in his...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader April 2018 The Library of America’s newest sports anthology, Basketball: Great Writing About America’s Game, is out and deserves a place on the shelf of any self-respecting hoops fan. We recently sat down with the book’s editor,...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader New York magazine is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and they really pulled out all the stops with this big, fat, sexy coffee table book. It’s really well done and so worth having. Some of New York’s most famous stories are...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader I love anthologies of magazine journalism but you don’t see them published much these days and that’s a damn shame. Safe to say everyone around these parts is grateful to the university presses for keeping the fine tradition alive. We...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader September 16, 2014 Hard to imagine having a cooler job than the one Gregg Sutter had for more than 30 years, when he served as the late Elmore Leonard’s researcher. Sutter is the editor of the Library of America’s Elmore Leonard...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader November 16, 2015 The good people at Taschen have decided to show us more of sports photographer Neil Leifer’s work, and this is a very good thing. We’re in the thick of football season now, and I can think of no finer accompaniment...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter August 14, 2014 Today marks the publication of the Library of America’s latest sports anthology—-Football: Great Writing about the National Sport. It’s edited by our old chum John Schulian. Alex Belth: When you read boxing or baseball...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter April 30, 2012 Robert Ward is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He recently published Renegades, a collection of his magazine work from the 1970s and was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule for a chat. Alex...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter April 30, 2013 “The truest thing in the world was that you showed who you were writing a column. He said that at his lectures, and they always took that to mean politics or how you feel about the death penalty. Which had nothing to do with...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter June 20, 2011 The Cardboard God of Hellfire, our man Josh Wilker, has a new book out. I recently had a chance to ask him a few questions about it. Alex Belth: How did this project come about? Josh Wilker: I guess the series editor, Sean...
