Gay Talese is known for his daring pursuit of "unreportable" stories, for his exhaustive research, and for his formally elegant style. These qualities, arguably, are the touchstones of the finest literary journalism. Talese is often cited as one of the founders of the 1960s New Journalism, but he has always politely demurred from this label, insisting that his "stories with real names" represent no reformist crusade but rather his own highly personal response to the world as an Italian American "outsider."

Talese was born 7 February 1932 on the small island of Ocean City, New Jersey, a resort town south of Atlantic City. The lives of his parents, Joseph Talese, a southern Italian tailor who immigrated to the United States in 1922, and Catherine DePaolo, a buyer for a Brooklyn department store, are chronicled in Unto the Sons (1992), Talese's memoir and history of Italian immigration to America. In "Origins of a...