Describes the author's career as a receptionist at the prestigious New Yorker magazine, recounting her relationships with famous poets, essayists, and playwrights, and chronicling the behind-the-scenes affairs of the magazine and its staff.

"Over 2,000 selected cartoons ... appear in the ... hardcover, and all 68,647 are featured on the two accompanying CD-ROMs (a digital anthology fully browsable by date, subject, and artist)."--Publisher's website. CD-ROMs contain all cartoons published in the "New Yorker" from 1925 Feb. 21 through 2004 Feb. 23, and comprise the contributions of hundreds of artists, including works of: Constantin Alajalov, Douglas Borgstedt, Boris Drucker, Alan Dunn,...

"Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker was one of the greatest nonfiction writers in American letters. His long-form profiles of the everyday people and places at the margins of the city he loved--high-rise construction workers, Staten Island oystermen, Bowery bums--pioneered a new kind of reportage. In the Thirties, Forties, Fifties, and early Sixties he wrote about some of the most quirky and memorable characters ever captured on the page, culminating...

Including contributions by W. H. Auden - Elizabeth Bishop - John Cheever - Janet Flanner - John Hersey - Langston Hughes - Shirley Jackson - A. J. Liebling - William Maxwell - Carson McCullers - Joseph Mitchell - Vladimir Nabokov - Ogden Nash - John O'Hara - George Orwell - V. S. Pritchett - Lillian Ross - Stephen Spender - Lionel Trilling - Rebecca West - E. B. White - Williams Carlos Williams - Edmund Wilson And featuring new perspectives by Joan...