the art of the steal | House of SpeakEasy NYC

Posts From Author: the art of the steal

Curtain Call: The Ink Runs Dry

What happens when The Ink Runs Dry? Fortunately, the House of SpeakEasy has a talking cure. We’re delighted to welcome Jonathan Alter, David Gilbert, Christopher Mason, Jay Parini and Amanda Vaill to City Winery for another Seriously Entertaining literary cabaret, taking in tortured geniuses, presidential candidates, messiahs and more. Read on, dear friends, to meet this month’s line-up. Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, reporter, columnist, and television analyst. A veteran of nine presidential elections, his latest work has dissected the Obama White House, first in The Promise: President Obama, Year One (2010) and most recently in The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies (2013), which we reviewed here. His other books include The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (2007). Here Alter talks to the Washington Post about The Center Holds. “He’s very clear about needing to be president of all the people, and not the president of Black America. But he doesn’t like to talk about that too much in public… Because he’s African-American, the president can’t swing at every pitch that he wants to. Otherwise he plays into the hands of his enemies…” David Gilbert is the author of two novels, The Normals (2004) and & Sons (2013). The latter, a […]

Five Minutes with Maestro Christopher Mason

Christopher Mason, who makes his House of SpeakEasy bow on May 20 (tickets on sale here), is an author, journalist, photographer, television presenter, wearer of excellent bow-ties, and singer-songwriter extraordinaire. It’s in this latter capacity that he’ll be entertaining the crowd at City Winery next week, much as he’s previously delighted mayors, senators, princes, duchesses, and Bob Weinstein’s three-year-old son. Literally. This week I spoke to Christopher about his fabulous career. Charles Arrowsmith: You have been called “the premier journalist covering the nether world of high society”. What is it about this milieu that you find particularly fascinating? Christopher Mason: My first job in New York as a transplanted Brit (thirty years ago) was working for George Trescher, a hilariously acerbic PR and fundraising genius, whose closest friends were Brooke Astor, Jacqueline Onassis, and Liz Smith. It was an eye-popping intro to the way power is wielded in New York, and a primer in the triumphs, tragedies, and atrocities of the literate glitterati. I began lampooning them with satirical songs in the late ’80s, then switched to prose, taking some satirical swipes in my feature stories for the New York Times. That led to my investigative book The Art of the Steal (Berkley […]