If you admire Rivera, buy this book. It sits on our coffee table and is very alluring. It makes a great gift for any fan of this extraordinary artist.

Submitted by the author of "I'm Living Your Dream Life."

Unforgettable reading, Diego Rivera is a vivid, emotionally written biography of the famous Mexican artist, mural painter, and Communist activist Diego Rivera (1886-1957). Biographer Pete Hamill narration of Rivera's remarkable life is enhanced with Rivera's great works of art both in full color replications and through black-and-white photographs. With an informed and informative text more heavily weighted toward relating Rivera's life story than simply being a showcase of Rivera's great murals, Diego Rivera blends both the highs and lows in his struggle through life for meaning against a background of turbulent politics, as well as the overwhelming messages of his art.

Diego Rivera, the man, is not nearly as well known as Diego Rivera, the magnificant muralist. Pete Hamill's biography will change all that. I have been a fan of Hamill's journalistic writing since 1970, so I was surprised at first when I saw that he had authored this book. Then I learned in the introduction that Hamill had studied painting in Mexico City as a young man, before giving it up for writing. So he has a unique perspective to share with us.

Diego Rivera's art soars above his own life. He was very self-centered and almost always did what was best for him and his art career. To cover up for his lapses, he loved to tell stories to make himself seem very grand. For example, although he was out of Mexico for almost the entire 10 years of the Revolution (where 10 percent of the population died), he claimed to have fought in it.

Perhaps his least desirable quality was the way he treated women. It seems like he was attracted to hurting those he loved, and was always looking for the newest conquest. Although he was a physically unattractive man for most of his life (usually weighing over 300 pounds), he had a series of beautiful women as his wives and lovers, including famous motion picture actresses.

He was an important man in the Mexican Communist party, and later brought Trotsky to Mexico. Later, the shifts in doctrine involving Stalin led Rivera to be ousted from the party. No idealogue, he paid attention to the party about as well as he did to his wives. Yet near the end of his life, he begged his way back into the party.

Throughout his Communistic associations, he was delighted to work for wealthy capitalists . . . another indication that his career came first.

Near his death, he resumed his original Catholic faith, amazing almost everyone who knew him.

Although we think of him as the ultimate Mexican artist, he was classically trained in the Spanish style in Mexico and spent almost all of his early career in Europe. It was only the ending of the Revolution and the prospect of large mural commissions that lured him and other leading Mexican artists back to Mexico. Like the other artists, he had to learn how to paint murals.

Throughout the book, you will find your main reward -- gorgeous color reproductions of Rivera's most vivid work, along with beautiful black and white sketches, and photographs of Rivera at work and play.

The book's main weakness is that Hamill is no art historian. His discussions of the art are short and unimaginative. But he has strong opinions and does tell you what he likes (that which is reproduced -- new themes, new symbols and relatively less finished details) and that which he does not (that which is not reproduced here and Rivera's developments of earlier themes). So you will have to look at the work and figure out what you think about it without too much help from Hamill beyond describing the imagery. I especially encourage you to consider Rivera's cubist works. The book makes an interesting case for Picasso having lifted key ideas for some of his best work from Rivera.

Hamill does a fine job of giving a sense of the relentless pressure for revolution, the early optimism about the Revolution, and the descent into business as usual. I enjoyed learning more about the Mexican Revolution, as a result.

I was also glad to learn where Rivera's murals are so that I can see them in person. That's a great reason to visit Mexico!

Overcome your stalled thinking that great work makes a great person. Creating a good person may be more difficult than making great art. What do you think?

Paul Sann's effort in bringing back a violent period in America's history is successful in his account of the life of Arthur Fregenheimer, better known to intimates as "Dutch" Schultz, The Beer Baron of the Bronx. A detailed account of The Dutchman's demise is given and those involved in The Palace Bar and Chop House in Newark, New Jersey, in October of 1935. Three of Schultz's cronies in addition to The Dutchman were dispatched in a gunfight in which Charlie Workman shot Schultz in the mens' room. The book is filled with infamous names from the prohibition days in New York's underworld. Author Paul Sann has written other books regarding the post World War I era, and this book on Dutch Schultz illustrates the stressfulness of just staying alive for gangsters during this time period.

This is one of my favorite gangster bios. Dutch Schultz was one of the most colorful and vicious mobsters of the Prohibition era and Sann's lively, tough prose brings the Dutchman vividly to life. No source notes for the more academic-minded readers but take it from me, it's "on the level" as Arthur Flegenheimer would probably say.

This is probably the best book written about crime in the 1920s and 1930s, Dutch Schultz, and his life and times. Author Paul Sann has written a tough and revealing book second to none about this amazing era. A most read for anyone interested in these subjects.

A recurring theme in "Piecework" is that America has become a place in which people no longer seem to have the basic toughness to accept life's hardships, and must therefore heap the blame upon everyone else.

The situation is made worse, Pete Hamill says, by television, which allows people to have deep emotional experiences without "earning" them. This attitude is summed up most effectively in two essays, "Letter to a Black Friend" and the disturbing "Endgame."

When Hamill isn't shaking his head at our collective mistakes, he is shining the spotlight on individuals -- as he does in solid features on Mike Tyson and Frank Sinatra -- or examining a city gone wrong, the Miami of the 1980s. Here, and throughout you see the keen observation skills, dogged research, and common sense that made Hamill a top-flight reporter first, an insightful columnist second.

Whether or not you share Pete Hamill's old-fashioned, hard-nosed worldview, you won't be able to deny that he expresses it brilliantly here.

Some beautiful writing--the kind of material you go back to over and over again just to see how he does it. The piece titled "Endgame" is worth the price of the book. It describes the craziness and the downward spiral of this splintered country of ours better than anything I've ever read.

Here it is folks: How To Write 101. All you ever needed to know about writing columns is between these two covers, in my opinion.

Anyone who grew up enjoying Bill Gallo's cartoons in the sports pages of the New York Daily News will delight in this collection, spanning all the decades of Gallo's career. Features all the famous (and infamous) sports figures and events you remember, and plenty of Gallo's beloved characters like Basement Bertha, Yutchie, and General Von Steingrabber. Smart, funny, moving, nostalgic.

"Drawing A Crowd" is filled with great sports cartoons and so much more. Bill takes you "behind the scenes" of the cartoons. He offers insight into the athletes, where we stood as a nation when the cartoon was published, and what was going on in his life at the time. Although Bill has spent his career at The NEW YORK Daily News, "Drawing A Crowd" contains cartoons of all the big athletes from all over the country throughout the decades. Thank you, Mr. Gallo, for finally putting this book together. "Drawing A Crowd" holds a prominent spot in my private library.

I bought this book back in 1999. I am a New Yorker and I wanted a book that showcased all of my wonderful city. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought that I would have to look at this book in order to ever see the World Trade Center again. After the attack on New York City on Sept.11, 2001, my whole world as I knew it changed forever. This wonderful, beautiful book is my only reminder of the New York City that I have known and loved all my life. I know the Twin Towers will rise again! Until then I have my book!

I bought the book based on the coverphoto. Regarding that I in fact wanted a book on New York, I cannot say I regret it. The book is fully illustrated with beautiful photographs of New Yorks five boroughs. Though I`ve been to New York five times before I`ve only been to Manhattan and Queens, but I surely was tempted to see all five boroughs when I go back during fall -99. The photographs has a soul in a way and all represent a motion or a mood that I catched right away. I could actually feel the smells the sounds and the dynamic pulse New York stands for. Pete Hamill's text as an introduction to each borough gives the reader a fully good and poetic insight in New Yorks majestic soul.

I definently enjoyed reading it...some of the stories are amazing. I want a job in transit, and this book showes what ill face when i get it. Cant wait. This book clearly explains and shows the lives of workers which work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to please the public! This book is amazing...Get it, you will enjoy it!

It's about time someone did a book on what the guys who are up all day/night to get us where we want to go. This is a great book and it's nice to see these guys get some credit.

This text is a success, largely due to the fine work of Robert Singer. His work as a film scholar is well represented here in this collection of critical studies of the Brooklyn film. Manbeck's strong work as the official historian of Kings County serves as a fine counterbalance to the analytical approaches put forth by the film scholars. All in all, the text is easy to read, and a must for the true Brooklyn afficianado.

Pete Hamill wrote this novella immediately after he took that last drink on New Year's Eve, 1972. He wrote in A DRINKING LIFE: "The book was full of drinking and love for my father and the sweat poured out of me while I wrote. I thought of the book as my own gift to him, a declaration of his value that he could read while he was alive, and an explanation of myself to him and to me..." On leave from the Navy at Christmastime, Hamill writes of a boy becoming a man in his late teen's. He evokes the warp and woof of a Brooklyn long gone. A neighborhood where the men gathered in saloons, telling each other lies, singing Irish songs, and getting into brawls. More than that, it is a story of a son getting to really know his father on some even plane. Hamill was old enough to be in the Navy, so he was old enough to drink in his father's favorite watering holes. He finds out things he never knew but often wondered about. Directly from his father's once reticent mouth. It is a touching story. Hamill writes with grace. You'll find youself reaching back to your own coming of age.

"(Harvey Wang's New York is) a little gem that celebrates the obscure New Yorkers who represent the city's diversity..." -Entertainment Weekly.

"Wang's photos are direct, arresting, even soulful, and his character's stories are surprisingly poignant...No matter how many millions of stories are in the Naked City, these are sure to linger in your mind." - Los Angeles Times .

'I can conceive of Harvey Wang's New York as readily as Liebling's, Walt Whitman's or Edith Wharton's...(the book is the product ) of a man who, like Balzac, intuitively understands the primacy of work in the lives of working people." -Albany Sunday Times Union.

I found this book in a used book shop, and being a fan of Hamill's, I bought it. Somewhat semi-autobiographical, the book follows a Brooklyn youth into his induction into the Navy and life at its most raw. The story thrusts one suprise twist on top of another, one exciting episode is immediately replaced by one even more thrilling. And this may be the most erotic book I have ever read. Not quite pornographic, the scenes of lust between two lovers are very descriptive and will stick with the reader for some time. I have read thousands of books, and this has to be in my top ten. Look for it, the search will be highly rewarding.