About the Book
What defines Boston? Its history? Its landmarks? Its sports teams and shrines?
Perhaps the question should be, who defines Boston? From Henry David Thoreau to Dennis Lehane, Boston has been beloved by many of America's greatest writers, and there is no better group of men and women to capture the heart and soul of the Hub. In Our Boston, editor Andrew Blauner has collected both original and reprinted essays from Boston-area writers past and present, all celebrating the city they love. In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, they responded to his call to celebrate this great city by providing almost all brand-new works, and forgoing royalties in order to support the survivors and their families.
From Mike Barnicle to Pico Iyer, Susan Orlean to George Plimpton, Leigh Montville to Lesley Visser, Pagan Kennedy to James Atlas, here is a collection of the best essays by our best writers on one of America's greatest cities.
About the Author :
Andrew Blauner is the founder of Blauner Books Literary Agency. He is the editor of Coach: 25 Writers Reflect on People Who Made a Difference; Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry; and Central Park: An Anthology. He is also coeditor of Anatomy of Baseball. A graduate of Brown University and Columbia Business School, he is a member of PEN and the National Book Critic Circle.
Andrew Blauner is the founder of Blauner Books Literary Agency. He is the editor of Coach: 25 Writers Reflect on People Who Made a Difference; Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry; and Central Park: An Anthology. He is also coeditor of Anatomy of Baseball. A graduate of Brown University and Columbia Business School, he is a member of PEN and the National Book Critic Circle.
Kevin Cullen is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has written for the Boston Globe since 1985, and he was the first to raise questions about Whitey Bulger's relationship with the FBI. A frequent commentator on NPR and the BBC, Cullen has won major journalism prizes, including the Goldsmith Prize, the George Polk Award, and the Selden Ring Award.
André Aciman is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me By Your Name, Out of Egypt, Eight White Nights, False Papers, Alibis, Harvard Square, Enigma Variations, and Find Me. He is the editor of The Proust Project and teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Charles McGrath is a writer at large at The New York Times, and was formerly editor of The New York Times Book Review and deputy editor of The New Yorker. He is the coauthor of The Ultimate Golf Book and a frequent contributor to Golf Digest. McGrath lives in New Jersey. Madeleine Blais was a reporter for the Miami Herald for years before joining the faculty of the School of Journalism at the University of Massachusetts. She is the author of In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle, Uphill Walkers, and The Heart Is an Instrument, a collection of her journalism. Madeleine lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. George Howe Colt is the bestselling author of November of the Soul: The Enigma of Suicide and The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home, which was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. He lives with his family in Massachusetts.
Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1992. She is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, and Saturday Night, as well as The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award-winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and on Twitter @SusanOrlean.
David Michaelis is the author of two bestselling biographies, including N. C. Wyeth, which won the Ambassador Book Award for Biography and Autobiography, given by the English-Speaking Union of the United States. He lives in New York City.
Jabari Asim is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. He directs the MFA program in creative writing at Emerson College, where he is also the Elma Lewis Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice. He has written for the Washington Post and is the former editor-in-chief of the NCAAP magazine The Crisis.
Lesley Visser is the most highly acclaimed female sportscaster of all time. She is the first and only woman in the Pro Football Hall of Fame; the only female sportscaster to have carried the Olympic Torch; the only woman to have presented the championship Lombardi Trophy at the Super Bowl; and the first woman on the network broadcasts of the Final Four, Super Bowl, and NBA finals. She was voted the Outstanding Female Sportscaster of all Time by the National Sportscasters of America, and was also elected to the Sportswriters Hall of Fame for her work at the Boston Globe, national magazines, and CBS.com. Visser was the first and only woman to win the Billie Jean King "Outstanding Journalist" award, and has been honored as the first woman Lombardi Fellow, named a Sports Business Journal "Champion," and also elected to the Sports Museum of Boston. A graduate of Boston College, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2007, she has been on the board of the V Foundation for Cancer Research for more than twenty years, while also serving on the board of NYU's "Sports and Society." Visser has mentored young women for decades, while speaking at colleges and businesses around the world. A sportscaster at CBS for more than twenty-five years, she also spent nearly ten at ABC Sports, where she became the first woman on Monday Night Football while also covering the World Series, World Figure Skating, World Skiing Championships, and Triple Crown. She has been voted one of the "Women We Love" by Esquire magazine and one of "Five Ideal Dinner Guests" by GQ. Most recently, she was honored by the Muhammad Ali Center as a "Daughter of Greatness," in recognition of her leadership and dedication to activism and pursuit of justice. She and her husband, Bob Kanuth, a former captain of Harvard Basketball, live in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida. Hugh Delehanty is a former editor for Sports Illustrated and People. He is also the co-author, along with Phil Jackson, of the bestselling memoir Sacred Hoops.
George Plimpton (1927-2003) was the bestselling author and editor of nearly thirty books, as well as the cofounder, publisher, and editor of the Paris Review. He wrote regularly for such magazines as Sports Illustrated and Esquire, and he appeared numerous times in films and on television.
Leslie Epstein (1938-2025) was an award-winning author of eleven books of fiction, including the celebrated novels San Remo Drive and King of the Jews. His father and uncle, Philip G. and Julius J. Epstein, wrote Arsenic and Old Lace, Casablanca, and many other classics of the golden era of films. He taught at Boston University, where he directed the creative writing program for thirty-six years.
Nell Scovell is a television writer, producer, and director. She collaborated with Sheryl Sandberg on the #1 New York Times bestseller Lean In and is the creator of the television series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Other credits include The Simpsons, Coach, Monk, Murphy Brown, Charmed, and NCIS. She has directed two movies for cable and an episode of Awkward for MTV. She has contributed to SPY magazine, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and the New York Times.
She and her husband, Colin Summers, have two college-age sons. Despite Blue Öyster Cult's well-reasoned arguments, she still fears the reaper.
Dennis Lehane is the author of numerous novels, including several New York Times bestsellers, as well as a collection of short stories and a play. Mystic River was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, and it won the Anthony Award, the Barry Award for Best Novel, and the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, given by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.
James Atlas has been an editor for the New York Times Book Review and the New York Times Magazine and a staff writer for the New Yorker and the Atlantic. He is the founder of Atlas Books and the general editor of the Eminent Lives series. His other books include Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet, Bellow: A Biography, and a novel, The Great Pretender, among others.
Leigh Montville is a former columnist at the Boston Globe and former senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller The Big Bam.
Tova Mirvis is the author of the memoir The Book of Separation as well as four novels, We Would Never, Visible City, The Outside World, and The Ladies Auxiliary, which was a national bestseller. Her essays have appeared in various newspapers including the New York Times Book Review, Boston Globe Magazine, and Poets and Writers, and her fiction has been broadcast on NPR. You can connect with her on her website, TovaMirvis.com.
Pagan Kennedy is the author of eleven books. Her journalism has appeared in dozens of publications, and she has worked as a columnist for the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe Magazine, and the Village Voice. She has co-produced and authored a serial podcast for Radiotopia network that won a Webby Award. She has also been awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, an NEA Fellowship, a Smithsonian Fellowship, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships.
Scott Stossel is the editor of the Atlantic and the author of Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver. His articles and essays have appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He lives with his family in Washington, DC.
Robert Pinsky was born and raised in Long Branch, New Jersey. He went to college at Rutgers and then to graduate studies at Stanford, where he held a Stegner Fellowship. Among his collections of poetry are Gulf Music, Jersey Rain, The Want Bone, and The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996. His bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante received both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. His prose books include The Life of David, The Situation of Poetry, and The Sounds of Poetry. Among his awards and honors are the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Harold Washington Award from the City of Chicago, the Italian Premio Capri, the PEN-Volcker Award, and the Korean Manhae Prize. He recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the PEN American Center. Robert Pinsky founded The Favorite Poem Project, including the videos that can be seen at www.favoritepoem.org, while serving an unprecedented three terms as United States Poet Laureate.
Bill Littlefield has hosted National Public Radio's weekly sports magazine, "Only A Game," since 1993 and has written commentaries for NPR and Boston's WBUR-FM for over thirty years. He is the author of seven books, including the novels Prospect and The Circus in the Woods and the recent collection of sports verse Take Me Out. In 2001 he met W. C. Heinz and they became friends, for which he has been grateful ever since. Neil Swidey is the author of The Assist, a Boston Globe bestseller that was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. A staff writer for the Boston Globe Magazine, he has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and has twice won the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. He teaches at Tufts University and lives outside Boston with his wife and three daughters.
Jessica Shattuck is a New York Times bestselling novelist. Her book The Hazards of Good Breeding was a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the PEN/Winship Award. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Glamour, Mother Jones, Wired, and The Believer, among other publications. A graduate of Harvard University, she received her MFA from Columbia University.
John Updike (1932-2009) was the author of more than sixty books, including collections of short stories, poems, and criticism. His novels have been honored with two Pulitzer Prize Awards, the National Book Award, and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Hugging the Shore, a collection of essays and reviews, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.
Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books, translated into twenty-three languages. His journalism has appeared in Time, the New York Times, New York Review of Books, the London Financial Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. His TED talks have been viewed over eleven million times. He divides his time between Japan and a Benedictine hermitage in California.
Peter Berkrot, a forty-year veteran of stage and screen, has voiced over 450 audiobook titles, winning Earphones Awards, a 2012 Audie Award nomination, and a 2016 Audie Award.
Johnny Heller, winner of numerous Earphones and Audie Awards, was named a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has been a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award winner from 2008 through 2013 and he has been named a top voice of 2008 and 2009 and selected as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine.
Malcolm Hillgartner is an accomplished actor, writer, and musician. Named an AudioFile Best Voice of 2013 and the recipient of several Earphones Awards, he has narrated over 250 audiobooks.
Jim Meskimen is a stage, film, and television actor who has appeared in many well-known movies and television shows. He acted in Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon for director Ron Howard, both of which were nominated for Best Picture Oscars. His television appearances include The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Friends, Lie to Me, Criminal Minds, and Parks and Recreation. He is also a painter, award-winning audiobook narrator, and audiobook director for Galaxy Audio.
Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award-winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.
Bernadette Dunne is the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.
Bronson Pinchot, Audible's Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible's Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People's Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.
Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor and recording artist who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook, Many Things Invisible. Alongside her narration work, she has released a new album of original songs, Only an Angel.
Susan Boyce is the award-winning narrator of over 140 audiobooks. She performs in variety theater, is one half of the song-and-dance team of Jones & Boyce, and holds a degree in theater and biology. She can be heard in phone trees, in computer games, and as the voice of the pink "Care Bear." She lives in St. Augustine, Florida, and summers in Greenville, Maine.
Kevin Kenerly, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, earned a BA at Olivet College. A longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has acted in more than twenty seasons, playing dozens of roles.
Meredith Mitchell is an actress who has performed in such films as Mona Lisa Smile and The Reunion, on stage with Shakespeare & Company and the New Repertory Theatre, and on television on Good Morning America. She received her BA in psychology from Emory University and her MFA in acting from Brandeis University.
Ralph Lister is an actor, voice actor, and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. He spent fifteen years in London theater before moving to the United States to focus on film and television. He has held numerous roles in Shakespeare and modern dramas, as well as starring roles in independent films. His voice and character work can be heard in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearland 13 Going On 30. He lives in Los Angeles.
Review :
"Our Boston gives us skilled, knowing, warm, observant writers who embrace the city personally, pointedly, suggestively, and in so doing tell us so very much about our country, ourselves. Their Boston is a telling reminder of a nation's story."
-- "Robert Coles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author"
"Our Boston is a stellar anthology, a love letter to a resilient city penned by an all-star team of writers, from Lehane to Updike to Orlean, among others. This book is as full of history and surprises as the city itself."
-- "Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author"
"A collection of nonfiction pieces by an impressive array of writers...A must-read for everyone who already cares about Boston and anyone looking beyond the tourist guides for a more intimate view of this iconic American city."
-- "Booklist"
"A distinguished, eloquent, and deeply felt testimony evoking not only the shadow on our hearts but also the resolve and vitality of this great American city."
-- "Alec Wilkinson, author of The Ice Balloon"
"For anyone who loves great writing and learning about the lives of great writers. It's an absolute gem of a book--as perfect as a Legal lobster dinner or a Toscanini's sundae."
-- "Seth Mnookin, New York Times bestselling author"
"Like the remarkable city to which they pay tribute, the pieces assembled in this book are diverse, engrossing, illuminating, emotional, funny--and glorious. Anyone who loves or has ever loved Boston will want a copy."
-- "Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children"
"Read this book if you have ever lived in Boston and want to remember the unique pull of the place; if you've never lived in Boston and want to understand its unusual charm; if you currently live in Boston and want to see reflected in these pages a metropolis that thrums with innovation and warmth at the same time."
-- "Lauren Slater, author of Opening Skinner's Box"
"The quality of the writing is uniformly high...worthy and moving."
-- "Kirkus Reviews"
