Well known for his foreign correspondence from London and Moscow, New York Times reporter Francis X. Clines established his reputation as a literary journalist in the late 1970s as the author of a long-running column, "About New York." In the course of three years Clines reinvigorated the column with vivid prose that captured the colorful and varied life of city-dwellers, the poor and the rich, the forgotten and the influential. The best of his "About New York" columns were collected in 1980 in the book About New York.

Clines, a native New Yorker who has spent his entire professional career at The New York Times, was born 7 February 1938 of second- and third-generation Irish stock, the son of Francis A. Clines, an accountant, and Mary Ellen Lenihan Clines. Clines was reared in Brooklyn, but his mother had been born in Hell's Kitchen, the working-class Irish ghetto on Manhattan's West Side...