A classic work on Broadway sharpers, grifters, and con men by the late, great New Yorker journalist A. J. Liebling. Often referred to as “Liebling lowlife pieces,” the essays in The Telephone Booth Indian boisterously celebrate raffishness. A. J. Liebling appreciated a good scam and knew how to cultivate the scammers. Telephone Booth Indians (entrepreneurs so impecunious that they conduct business from telephone booths in the lobbies of New York City office buildings) and a host of other petty nomads of Broadway—with names like Marty the Clutch and Count de Pennies—are the protagonists in this incomparable Liebling work. In The Telephone Booth Indian , Liebling proves just why he was the go-to man on New York lowlife and con culture; this is the master at the top of his form, uncovering scam after scam and writing about them with the wit and charisma that established him as one of the greatest journalists of his generation and one of New York’s finest cultural chroniclers.

Collected essays about the news business and newspapers that appeared in the New Yorker magazine in the 1940s.

A.J. Liebling was one of America's finest and most influential journalists. Reprinted here in full The Telephone Booth Indian (1942) - a witty portrait of an unusual group of entrepreneurs. These Manhattan lowlifes conduct unsavory business from the telephones in the lobbies of office buildings. The Second City (1952) - a chronicle of life in the windy city as seen by an outsider, a New Yorker and avowed Francofile.'The Honest The Life and Times of Colonel John R. Stingo (1953) - a fond biography of Colonel Stingo, raconteur and track denizen of Runyonesque proportions.'The Earl of Louisiana' (1961) - which captures the essence of a uniquely American character, Earl Long."The Jollity Building' (1962) - Otherwise known as the Brill Building, which picks up Liebling's portrait of Manhattan's West Side begun in 'The Telephone Booth Indian'. Here are hacks and hustlers scrambling over one another, vying for the 'big break.'In all five volumes, both the exalted and obscure are treated with the insight, candor, and wit that are the hallmarks of Liebling's writing.