Kirjahaku

"The wry and knowing Mike Sager has written a saucy and kinetic L.A. novel. Celebrity gets fully toasted in this engaging romp about show business and the clash of cultures high and low, where the talk is tough before the shooting starts. The spotlight, it seems, can sometimes be a very dark place." -Ron Carlson, author, Return to Oakpine, co-director, MFA Program in Fiction Writing, University of California, Irvine.In this artful page-turner, a beloved superstarlet, a controversial billionaire Hip Hop mogul, and a television writer/producer idled by a demoralizing strike are linked together improbably by murder, domestic heartbreak, a sex video . . . and their inclusion on a secret subscription list for an exclusive designer strain of medical marijuana. Over a span of three seemingly ordinary days and nights in Los Angeles, the world wobbles on its digital axis, and futures are forever changed.Hollywood, January 2008. The Writers Guild of America is on strike. An increasingly peevish viewing audience is relegated to a starvation diet of reruns and old movies. What happens when a series of shocking, deadly, and prurient events boils over into a perfect storm of serendipitous, round-the-clock programming? And what becomes of the major players, whose lives are inalterably masticated by the public's right to know?High Tolerance is the second novel by the award-winning Rolling Stone and Esquire journalist Mike Sager, whose work has inspired a number of films, including the classic Boogie Nights. He summons his considerable descriptive and narrative powers-and three decades behind the scenes covering celebrities, gangs, drugs, and crime-to weave together a raw and insightful tale of complicated lives in the shifting racial landscape of turn-of-the-century Los Angeles, the dream factory from which the American Zeitgeist is exported around the globe.

In the summer of 1988, about six months into the First Palestinian Intifada-an uprising by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip-journalist Mike Sager, a Jew, was sent by the Washington Post Sunday Magazine to investigate the human toll of the uprising. While much was known about the political situation at the time, little had been reported about the actual conditions of Palestinians living as refugees in squalid camps on or near lands that were once owned by their ancestors.Once in Jerusalem, walking through the Old City on a Shabbat evening after visiting the Western Wall, Sager met Bassem Hallak. Hallak was a Muslim and the proprietor of a family shop specializing in Palestinian antiquities on the Via Dolorosa, the cobbled street over which Jesus Christ is said to have carried his cross on the way to his crucifixion. At times, Hallak, who spoke English, German, French, Italian, Hebrew, and Arabic, worked as a tour guide and as a translator for visiting journalists. Meanwhile, he was secretly working as part of the resistance movement that spawned the Intifada.Within a few days, Sager had engaged Hallak as a guide and translator, and for the next six weeks, these two men, close in age but from wildly different backgrounds, crisscrossed the Holy Land together. They visited hospitals, cities, and refugee camps, witnessing the toll of the struggle, clashing at times with Israeli forces, and ultimately building a friendship as they learned that their similarities and growing affection far outweighed their differences.The controversial story was spiked by the magazine. It was later published to critical acclaim in a 2004 collection called Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print.Hallak died of a heart attack in late 2014, at the age of 54, in his family's home in the Mount of Olives, while awaiting an ambulance, which had been held up at various checkpoints on the way to his aid.

From ground zero of the deadliest wildfire in California history to the cozy living room of super-spokesmodel Brooke Burke; from the recording studio with gangsta-rap pioneer Ice Cube to the tour bus with the Satanic metal band Slayer; this tough but lyrical collection of seventeen stories, by award-winning Esquire and Rolling Stone writer Mike Sager, brings into sharp focus the rich but confusing state of modern American life- its values, virtues, obsessions, and hypocrisies. A second edition of the author's bestselling collection, with updated material and new author's note. Domestic Goddess Roseanne Barr battles Multiple Personality Disorder... Swingers attend a "fantasy weekend" in Pensacola... Twelve-year-olds joyride in stolen cars through the ruins of the Newark ghetto... Desmond the butler services the hoi polloi on Park Avenue... Football Hall-of-Famer Mike Ditka enjoys his summer vacation of golf, cigars, and private jets... Newly minted dot.com billionaire Mark Cuban buys himself an NBA basketball team...Deeply focused long-form narrative journalism from the writer who has been called "the Beat poet of American journalism- that rare reporter who can make literature out of shabby reality."

Mike Sager is to drugs, porn, and crimes of desperate delusion what Dominic Dunne is to the society murder. In addition to his long-classic Rolling Stone story "The Devil and John Holmes" (which helped inspire the upcoming Val Kilmer film, Wonderland) and his groundbreaking GQ piece about murdered Irish investigative reporter Veronica Guerin (also the subject of a major film starring Cate Blanchett), Scary Monsters and Super Freaks is a wonderful rogue's gallery of up-close pieces about the most public failures of the American dream. From Rick James and his drug-fueled detour into white slavery to the life and suicide of porn starlet Savannah, from deep inside the beating of Rodney King and the Heaven's Gate cult suicides to Chuck Berry's sexual predilections, this book brings to high-profile true crime a highly identifiable voice and style. Currently Esquire's Writer-at-Large, Sager takes us along for the ride with a raft of other figures including the late NWA Rapper Easy E. Winner, the FBI agent who fell in love with his informant, and the highest ranking DEA agent to be busted for drug trafficking.This is a brilliant debut collection by one of America's most respected and stylish crime writers.

Mike Sager has been called "the Beat poet of American Journalism." Vetville collects the best his stories about the Marine Corps. Together this tetralogy of long form pieces charts a life story arc of the modern Devil Dog. It begins at Camp Pendleton, CA, on field exercises with Lieutenant Colonel Bob Sinclair and his BN One-Four--the 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment--as they prepare to invade Afghanistan, the first wave of American combatants sent to war after the deadly terrorist attacks of 9/11. "You realize that your country has been attacked," he says. "You wanna strike back."From there, we head to the Wounded Warriors Barracks at Camp Lejeune where we meet Ringo, Cebula, Wildman, Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell, and the rest of the men recuperating together at a unique barracks where wounded Marines harness their esprit de corps to help one another through emotional and physical recovery. We hear their battlefield stories of war and heroism. And their stories of injury and despair. And we discover the soft center that lives beneath the tough exterior shell of the Marine Corps mystique--a deep love of comrades and country. "Wounded Warriors" was awarded a number of awards, including The Military Writers Society of America Founder's Award.In "Vetville" we visit a small farm in the mountains of Tennessee, where a Marine sergeant, in an effort to save himself and others, has opened his doors to veterans whose deep wounds don't necessarily show. And, we catch up with John Cebula, one of the men encountered aboard the Wounded Warriors barracks. Without a supportive network around him, he has turned to drugs. Finally, in "Fifty Grand in San Diego," we focus on the return to civilian life after the corps, with a look at a modern version of the American Dream--an ex-Marine playing Mr. Mom and finding his silver cloud in a dirty diaper.Wounded Warriors was awarded: *The American Author's Association Golden Quill Award*The Military Writers Society of America Founder's Award"Entertaining and fascinating. At the end of the book, you will find yourself changed in some way. Call it empathy, or just a compassionate response to have seen and become aware of another man's pain and suffering; but you will remember these men that you read about long after putting this book to rest." --Military Writers Society of AmericaSager has written a gripping account of how these Marines are coping with their combat-altered lives. An experienced interviewer, he lets the Marines' stories speak for themselves...Powerful stuff." --Leatherneck, Magazine of the Marines

"Janet Cooke was a warning shot, a harbinger of all kinds of journalistic scandals to come." --Howard Kurtz, author and media critic Janet Cooke caused one of the biggest scandals in the history of journalism when her Pulitzer Prize-winning article, about an eight-year-old heroin addict, turned out to be a fabrication. Cooke, a reporter for the Washington Post, worked under the legendary editors Ben Bradlee and Bob Woodward. Her disgrace was a jarring wakeup call for the news industry. Cooke's transgressions rocked the foundations of public trust the press had built since the Vietnam and Watergate eras, when the 4th Estate was seen as a force for objective reporting and an advocate for the public good. Immediately, Cooke became infamous, the first in a line of publicly exposed fabulists, including Stephen Glass of the New Republic and Jayson Blair of the New York Times. Cooke's case also came to symbolize myriad issues in journalism and beyond: i the use of unnamed sources, diversity recruitment, newsroom ethics, resume fraud, and the tendency of some writers, operating in the genre known as creative nonfiction, to take license in the pursuit of more literary storytelling. Janet's World, written by her former boyfriend and fellow Post staffer Mike Sager, is Cooke's only in-depth interview. While faithful to the basic fact-finding contained in the Washington Post's internal investigation of the case, easily available online, Sager's work plums the depths of Cooke's persona and upbringing, bringing to light the human story behind the headlines. Vilified by history as a fabricator, Cooke's difficult role as an African American professional woman in the early 1980s is often overlooked. The book also contains new material documenting the effects of the Cooke scandal on the 35th anniversary of the events.

Some say he was a breakthrough academic and visionary shaman. Others say he was a sham. Either way, Carlos Castaneda shaped a generation of mystical thinkers and magic mushroom eaters.In 1968, at the height of the psychedelic age, Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, the first of twelve books describing his apprenticeship to an Indian shaman, and his journeys to the "separate reality" of the sorcerers' worlds.Like Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf and Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, The Teachings of Don Juan and its sequels became essential reading for legions of truth seekers. Castaneda himself became a cult figure-seldom seen, nearly mythological, a cross between Timothy Leary and L. Ron Hubbard: a short, dapper, Buddha-with-an-attitude who likened his own appearance to that of a "Mexican bellhop."Though Castaneda had more than ten million books in print in seventeen languages, he lived in wily anonymity for nearly thirty years, doing his best, in his own words, to become "as inaccessible as possible." Most people figured he had a house somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, where he'd studied with his own teacher, a leathery old Indian brujo named Don Juan Matus.In truth, Castaneda lived and wrote for most of that time in Westwood Village, a neighborhood of students and professors in Los Angeles, not far from UCLA and Beverly Hills. Upon his death in 1998, things became even more murky.A year-long investigation into the mysterious life and impeccable death of Carlos Castaneda, as told by his wife, his adopted son, his mistresses, and his followers.

"John Holmes was every man's gigolo, a polyester smoothie with a sparse mustache, a flying collar and lots of buttons undone. He wasn't threatening. He chewed gum and overacted. He took a lounge singer's approach to sex, deliberately gentle, ostentatiously artful, a homely guy with a pinkie ring and a big dick who was convinced he was every woman's dream."--excerpt from "The Devil and John Holmes"John Curtis Holmes had the longest, most prolific career in the history of pornography. He had sex on-screen with two generations of leading ladies, from Seka and Marilyn Chambers to Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn, and Italian Member of Parliament Ciccolina. The first man to win the X-Rated Critics Organization Best Actor Award, Holmes was an idol and an icon, the most visible male porn star of his time.Holmes started in the business around 1968 and made more than two thousand movies. But after descending into a world of drugs and crime, he became the central figure in one of the most publicized mass murders in L.A. history, the 1981 Wonderland Avenue killings in Laurel Canyon, in which four people were brutally bludgeoned to death. Holmes was tried and acquitted of the crimes in 1982. He died from complications of AIDS on March 13, 1988.

Mike Sager has made a career "finding the quotidian within the extreme, the tender amid the grotesque," according to author and popular Columbia Journalism School professor Sam Freedman.A Boy and His Dog in Hell collects 19 stories that Sager-a best-selling author and veteran of the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and Esquire-calls "my milestones, the pieces that have defined and distinguished my work over forty-some years of journalism-adventures, high jinks, near-death moments, and wrenching intimate encounters that have helped to shape me as a writer and as a man."With Sager on point, the reader is taken on a journey through an America few people ever see, safe as they are within the borders of their own colorful squares in the patchwork quilt of diverse cultures, communities, and circumstances that make our nation.We meet: A pair of middle-school-age dropouts, brothers, living in the ruins of Northern Philadelphia, working shifts on the corner selling cocaine and fighting stolen pit bulldogs to the death. The members of a once-proud street gang who've lost their fortunes in a cloud of crack smoke. A seven-foot-six-inch, Sudanese-born basketball player-the first time he attempted a dunk, he broke his front teeth on the rim. He went on to become one of the greatest shot-blockers in the history of the National Basketball Association.We spend time with blue-collar tweakers in Hawaii; Aryan Nation troopers in Idaho; and near-fatally hip heroin addicts on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We meet the Reverend Al Sharpton at a time, early in his career, when this important civil rights figure was vilified and feared by many people of all races. A road trip across the country brings Sager eyeball to eyeball with a number of America's smartest men (and one woman). Life, it turns out, can be just as challenging on either end of the bell curve.We attend the ten-night "Superbowl of Rodeo" in Las Vegas with the world's winningest professional cowboy, a deep dive into red-state values and the American Western Ideal. We meet Charlie Van Dyke, 650 pounds, a fat man in a no-fat world, and Bill Hicks, a comedic genius destined for mainstream stardom until tragedy struck. And we spend seven days with NBA lightning rod Kobe Bryant, who lifted the craft of basketball into compelling art . . . and so beautifully made the tricky transition to the next chapter . . . before leaving the earth suddenly and too soon.Also included: six feature stories written during Sager's early years at the Washington Post, where he began his career as a copy boy in 1978. He has since completed journalism assignments in six subsequent decades.

Mike Sager has made a career "finding the quotidian within the extreme, the tender amid the grotesque," according to author and popular Columbia Journalism School professor Sam Freedman.A Boy and His Dog in Hell collects 19 stories that Sager-a best-selling author and veteran of the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and Esquire-calls "my milestones, the pieces that have defined and distinguished my work over forty-some years of journalism-adventures, high jinks, near-death moments, and wrenching intimate encounters that have helped to shape me as a writer and as a man."With Sager on point, the reader is taken on a journey through an America few people ever see, safe as they are within the borders of their own colorful squares in the patchwork quilt of diverse cultures, communities, and circumstances that make our nation.We meet: A pair of middle-school-age dropouts, brothers, living in the ruins of Northern Philadelphia, working shifts on the corner selling cocaine and spending their time off fighting stolen pit bulldogs to the death. The members of a once-proud street gang who've lost their fortunes in a cloud of crack smoke. A seven-foot-six-inch, Sudanese-born basketball player-the first time he attempted a dunk, he broke his front teeth on the rim. He went on to become one of the greatest shot-blockers in the history of the National Basketball Association.We spend time with blue-collar tweakers in Hawaii; Aryan Nation troopers in Idaho; and near-fatally hip heroin addicts on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We meet the Reverend Al Sharpton at a time, early in his career, when this important civil rights figure was vilified and feared by many people of all races. A road trip across the country brings Sager eyeball to eyeball with a number of America's smartest men (and one woman). Life, it turns out, can be just as challenging on either end of the bell curve.We attend the ten-night "Superbowl of Rodeo" in Las Vegas with the world's winningest professional cowboy, a deep dive into red-state values and the American Western Ideal. We meet Charlie Van Dyke, 650 pounds, a fat man in a no-fat world, and Bill Hicks, a comedic genius destined for mainstream stardom until tragedy struck. And we spend seven days with NBA lightning rod Kobe Bryant, who lifted the craft of basketball into compelling art . . . and so beautifully made the tricky transition to the next chapter . . . before leaving the earth suddenly and way too soon.Also included: six feature stories written during Sager's early years at the Washington Post, where he began his career as a copy boy in 1978. He has since completed assignments in six subsequent decades.

The Pope of Pot: And Other True Stories of Marijuana and Related High Jinks is a pocket collection, by the award-winning journalist (and former Rolling Stone drugs correspondent) Mike Sager, highlighting his dispatches from the cannabis underground. In "When Should a Man Stop Smoking Weed?" Sager looks back on a half-century of pot smoking, starting on a humid night in summer at age 12. "Marijuana has served as a great equalizer, a frequent teacher, and a pleasant companion," he writes, "leading me places I would never have otherwise gone." The Pope of Pot founded the nation's first marijuana delivery service in New York City, with a corps of bicycle messengers, all of them covered by a company dental plan. Meet the marijuana pope and his faithful followers at the Church of Realized Fantasies. Too bad the cops didn't think he was so amusing. In "Dab Artists" we meet the artesian crafters who occupied the outlaw edge of the vaping boom in the early days of legal weed. Cool but nerdy, deliberately unkempt, these self-taught Heisenbergs of hash oil gathered for the Secret Cup Finals in Las Vegas. In "The Pot Doctor Will See You Now," we meet Don Davidson, MD, a pioneer of online medical marijuana recommendations. Over several years, Dr. D. and his crew of doctors issued hundreds of thousands of weed licenses. A long and jangled day with the hardest working doctor in the marijuana business. And in "Meeting the Ghost of Christmas Future," Sager is sent by Rolling Stone to Woody Creek, CO, to aid his colleague, the legendary Hunter S. Thompson. Busted for possession of illegal drugs, HST faces a fifty-year prison sentence. The next three weeks will teach at least one of them lessons to last a lifetime.

Temple of Doom: And Other Stories of Kids and Crime, by the award-winning journalist Mike Sager, is a pocket collection of true stories-first published in Rolling Stone, G​​​​​​​Q, and Esquire-that shed light on the incredible intersection between underage kids and adult crimes and punishments. In the title story, police are baffled when eight Thai Buddhist monks and one nun are killed execution-style in a temple outside Phoenix-the worst mass murder in Arizona history. Nobody wants to believe the crime has been committed by a pair of gung-ho ROTC students from the local high school. In "The Death of a High School Narc," the fortunes of a small Texas town are changed inexorably when the city manager decides there is a drug problem at the local high school. In "Raised in Captivity" we meet Gary Fannon, who lost years of his life to a trumped-up arrest, a crooked cop, and draconian drug-sentencing laws. The decade he spent in prison taught him lessons no man should ever have to learn. "Revenge of the Donut Boys" visits Newark, New Jersey, which once had the highest rate of car theft in the nation, 56 percent of which were perpetrated by teens and pre-teens. "Death in Venice" takes us to the barrio in Venice, California, where the author embeds for six weeks with the once-proud Mexican American gang V-13 during the height of the crack epidemic. Life inside an L.A. gang. In "Fact: Five out of Five Kids Who Kill Love Slayer" the author embeds at home and on tour with the thrash metal band Slayer, rumored to be "violent and heavy drug users," who "worship Satan." Perception meets reality."Sager has made a career of finding the unexpected story and telling it with empathy and narrative skill." -Publishers Weekly