A. J. Liebling

'Fantastic. The benchmark for great food writing' Anthony Bourdain'The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite'Between Meals is the gourmand and journalist A.J. Liebling's delectable account of his time spent eating and drinking in 1920s Paris, under the tutelage of his friend Yves Mirande, 'one of the last of the great around-the-clock gastronomes of France'. With gluttonous joie de vivre, he fondly recalls everything from glorious dining ('A leg of lamb larded with anchovies, artichokes on a pedestal of foie gras, and four or five kinds of cheese') to bad rosé ('a pinkish cross between No-Cal and vinegar'), and an ill-fated sojourn at a Swiss slimming-clinic. Witty, tart and full of gusto, this is a love song to food, wine and Paris.'Liebling transfers excitement, warmth, wit and information ... as hearty and explicit as good Calvados' The New York Times Book ReviewWith an introduction by James Salter

Take a ringside seat next to A. J. Liebling at some of the greatest fights in history. Here is Joe Louis's devastating final match; Sugar Ray Robinson's dramatic comeback; and Rocky Marciano's rise to heavyweight glory. The heated ringside atmosphere, the artistry of the great boxers and the blows and parries of the classic fights are all vividly evoked in a volume described by Sports Illustrated as 'the best American sports book of all time'.'A rollicking god among boxing writers ... before Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson were out of diapers, Liebling was taking his readers on excursions through the hidden and often hilarious levels of this bruised subculture ... the Master' Los Angeles Times'Nobody wrote about boxing with more grace and enthusiasm' The New York Times

In the summer of 1959, A. J. Liebling, veteran writer for the New Yorker, came to Louisiana to cover a series of bizarre events that began with Governor Earl K. Long's commitment to a mental institution. Captivated by his subject, Liebling remained to write the fascinating yet tragic story of Uncle Earl's final year in politics. First published in 1961, The Earl of Louisiana recreates a stormy era in Louisiana politics and captures the style and personality of one of the most colorful and paradoxical figures in the state's history. This updated edition of the book includes a foreword by T. Harry Williams, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Huey Long: A Biography, and a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jonathan Yardley that discusses Liebling's career and his most famous book from a twenty-first-century perspective.

Abbott Joseph Liebling was one of the greatest of all New Yorker writers, a colorful figure who helped set the magazine's urbane tone and style. Just Enough Liebling gathers in one volume the vividest and most enjoyable of his pieces. Charles McGrath (in The New York Times Book Review) praised it as "a judicious sampling-a useful window on Liebling's vast body of writing and a reminder, to those lucky enough to have read him the first time around, of why he was so beloved." Today Liebling is best known as a celebrant of the "sweet science" of boxing, and as a "feeder" who ravishes the reader with his descriptions of food and wine. But as David Remnick observes in his fond and insightful introduction, Liebling is "boundlessly curious, a listener, a boulevardier, a man of appetites and sympathy"-and a writer who, with his great friend and colleague Joseph Mitchell, deftly traversed the boundaries between reporting and storytelling, between news and art.

A.J. Liebling's classic New Yorker pieces on the "sweet science of bruising" bring vividly to life the boxing world as it once was. The Sweet Science depicts the great events of boxing's American heyday: Sugar Ray Robinson's dramatic comeback, Rocky Marciano's rise to prominence, Joe Louis's unfortunate decline. Liebling never fails to find the human story behind the fight, and he evokes the atmosphere in the arena as distinctly as he does the goings-on in the ring--a combination that prompted Sports Illustrated to name The Sweet Science the best American sports book of all time.

A classic work on Broadway sharpers, grifters, and con men by the late, great "New Yorker" journalist A. J. Liebling. Often referred to as "Liebling lowlife pieces," the essays in "The Telephone Booth Indian" boisterously celebrate raffishness. A. J. Liebling appreciated a good scam and knew how to cultivate the scammers. Telephone Booth Indians (entrepreneurs so impecunious that they conduct business from telephone booths in the lobbies of New York City office buildings) and a host of other petty nomads of Broadway--with names like Marty the Clutch and Count de Pennies--are the protagonists in this incomparable Liebling work. In "The Telephone Booth Indian," Liebling proves just why he was the go-to man on New York lowlife and con culture; this is the master at the top of his form, uncovering scam after scam and writing about them with the wit and charisma that established him as one of the greatest journalists of his generation and one of New York's finest cultural chroniclers.

Many Chicagoans rose in protest over A. J. Liebling's tongue-in-cheek tour of their fair city in 1952. Liebling found much to admire in the Windy City's people and culture—its colorful language, its political sophistication, its sense of its own history and specialness, but Liebling offended that city's image of itself when he discussed its entertainments, its built landscapes, and its mental isolation from the world's affairs. Liebling, a writer and editor for the New Yorker, lived in Chicago for nearly a year. While he found a home among its colorful inhabitants, he couldn't help comparing Chicago with some other cities he had seen and loved, notably Paris, London, and especially New York. His magazine columns brought down on him a storm of protests and denials from Chicago's defenders, and he gently and humorously answers their charges and acknowledges his errors in a foreword written especially for the book edition. Liebling describes the restaurants, saloons, and striptease joints; the newspapers, cocktail parties, and political wards; the university; and the defining event in Chicago's mythic past, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Illustrated by Steinberg, Chicago is a loving, if chiding, portrait of a great American metropolis.

A Neutral Corner collects fifteen previously unpublished boxing pieces written by legendary sportswriter A.J. Liebling between 1952 and 1963.Demonstrating A.J. Liebling's abiding passion for the "sweet science" of boxing, A Neutral Corner brings together previously unpublished material. Antic, clear-eyed, and wildly entertaining, these essays showcase a The New Yorker journalist at the top of his form. Here one relives the high drama of the classic Patterson-Johansson championship bout of 1959, and Liebling's early prescient portrayal of Cassius Clay's style as a boxer and a poet is not to be missed. Liebling always finds the human story that makes these essays appealing to aficionados of boxing and prose alike. Alive with a true fan's reverence for the sport, yet balanced by a true skeptic's disdain for sentiment, A Neutral Corner is an American treasure.