Revenge of the Donut Boys: True Stories of Lust, Fame, Survival and Multiple Personality - Softcover

Sager, Mike

3.47

85 ratings by Goodreads

9781568583501: Revenge of the Donut Boys: True Stories of Lust, Fame, Survival and Multiple Personality

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1568583508 ISBN 13: 9781568583501

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2007

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From ground zero of the deadliest wildfire in California history to the cozy living room of super-spokesmodel Brooke Burke; from the recording studio with gangsta-rap pioneer Ice Cube to the tour bus with the Satanic metal band Slayer; this tough but lyrical collection of seventeen stories, by award-winning Esquire and Rolling Stone writer Mike Sager, brings into sharp focus the rich but confusing state of American life– its values, virtues, obsessions, and hypocrisies--in this second edition of his bestselling collection.

Domestic Goddess Roseanne Barr battles Multiple Personality Disorder... Swingers attend a “fantasy weekend” in Pensacola... Twelve-year-olds joyride in stolen cars through the ruins of the Newark ghetto... Desmond the butler services the hoi polloi on Park Avenue... Football Hall-of-Famer Mike Ditka enjoys his summer vacation of golf, cigars, and private jets... Newly minted dot.com billionaire Mark Cuban buys himself an NBA basketball team...

Deeply focused long-form narrative journalism from the writer who has been called “the Beat poet of American journalism– that rare reporter who can make literature out of shabby reality.” A Second Edition, with updated material and author's note.

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About the Author:

Mike Sager was a reporter at the Washington Post under then-metro editor Bob Woodward before leaving to write exclusively for magazines. A former contributing editor at Rolling Stone and GQ, he is currently a writer-at-large for Esquire. He lives in La Jolla, California.

Review:

"Compelling and stylish magazine journalism, rich in novelistic detail." -- Kirkus Reviews, April 2007

"If you haven't read Donut Boys, or Sager's work in Esquire, I highly recommend it. After today, I'll be a devoted reader...Sager's writing, hailed as New Journalism, is strikingly perceptive. He writes like a novelist, stocking his stories with the details and observations other journalists might toss away...I was stunned by both the absurdity and brilliance of this analogy." -- KPBS Radio's "Culture Lust" blog

"Like his journalistic precursors Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Sager writes frenetic, off-kilter pop-sociological profiles of Americans in all their vulgarity and vitality...He writes with flair, but only in the service of an omnivorous curiosity...He defies expectations in pieces that lesser writers would play for satire or sensationalism." -- New York Times Book Review

"Magazine journalism gets a much-justified bad rap for kowtowing to celebs, pushing overpriced fashions and obsessively chronicling trips to rehab. But a few writers get it really, really right and one of them is Mike Sager...Scary Monsters and Super Freaks, his 2003 collection, was both scary and super; Revenge of the Donut Boys is much less scary and no less super...Just good writin'. These two collections make a strong case, although he'd never make it himself, that Mike Sager is the best magazine journalist at work these days." -- Austin American-Statesman

"Multi-layered storytelling is what makes Revenge of the Donut Boys: True Stories of Lust, Fame, Survival and Multiple Personality so absorbing. Sager is expert in catching glimpses of the humanity in all of his subjects...This collection of stories is a case study for anyone interested in learning the art of literary journalism. But more importantly, it's a masterfully curated collection of that most exquisite of all curios, the human personality. Grade: A-." -- Cincinnati City Beat

"Sager is equally at home contextualizing celebrities as he is exposing small-time personalities--including his own." -- Washington City Paper

"Sager writes in convincingly novelistic detail and supple, pinpoint prose about the inner lives of a high school junior, a 92-year-old man, Slayer fans, swingers, struggling actors, Mike Ditka, and wildfire victims. The title piece is one of his best...A-." -- Entertainment Weekly

"The book...provides incisive looks into a range of subjects, from music to crime to the swinger lifestyle, with the deft precision that more than twenty years of experience provides." -- Flaunt

"The pieces...[will] move and entertain you." -- Esquire

"[Sager] comes back with pieces that are equally hilarious and touching." -- PublishersWeekly.com

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