It's News to Me: The Making and Unmaking of an Editor

In this smart and savvy memoir, Kosner tells of his life in the news business. He traces his career in publishing, from his first break in 1958 just out of college at the New York Post (where he later schooled Pete Hamill) to his prickly relationship with publishing icon Katharine Graham at Newsweek (she fired him) and his meteoric rise running some of publishing's most stellar venues. As editor of New York magazine and Esquire, Kosner vaulted those magazines to their zeniths. And Kosner was at the editor's helm of the New York Daily News the day the twin towers fell. A scrawny smart-ass from Manhattan's Washington Heights, Kosner has rubbed many a publisher the wrong way, including Graham, Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman; yet he was a consummate newsman and intuitive editor who helped shaped 40 years of New York journalism. Full of political and impolitic detail and leaving no magnate undished, Kosner bridges the time between Remingtons, cold type and the blogosphere.