About the Author

Founded by Clay Felker and Milton Glaser in 1968, New York was one of the earliest (and loudest) proponents of the New Journalism, launching the careers of Gloria Steinem, Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron, and many others. More recently, New York has won thirty-six National Magazine Awards in the past two decades—more than any other magazine—and six General Excellence awards. The Washington Post has called it “the nation’s best and most imitated city magazine.”

Reviews

“With irreverence and spunk, New York magazine has been around for half a century now. This very big book includes an oral history of the publication and a wide look at its greatest moments.”
—New York Times Book Review

“When New York magazine began in 1968, it was unique: a brash conglomeration of ingenious writers, editors, and graphic designers who generated narrative journalism that was so classic it became new again. . . . Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: 50 Years of New York encapsulates those five convulsive decades in lavish illustrations, vivid oral histories, and evocative recreations by, among others, Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron, Nicholas Pileggi, Julie Baumgold and Gael Greene from the magazine’s more than 2,300 issues.”
—Sam Roberts, The New York Times

“A delicious compendium of the magazine’s coverage from the half-century of its existence, this is the kind of book that incites nostalgia even for the moments you didn’t live though (there’s the original Tom Wolfe “Radical Chic” cover!) and reminds us of the things that haven’t changed (an essay by a wife titled “I Need a Wife,” timely now and forever).”
—Vogue

“Oversized, overstuffed . . . A great magazine is commemorated with an equally top-flight anthology. . . . The editors reproduce material that speaks not just to passing moments and fashions, but also to constant editorial emphases, such as high-quality artwork and portraiture. . . . History, local and global, unfolds in this fine gathering that represents a half-century and more than 2,300 issues.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“We tend to fetishize The New Yorker, but New York magazine has always been the publication that saw the city for what it is: big, brazen, and blustery. This oversized, beautifully-designed, 420-page book is barely big enough to contain its subject.”
—Design Observer