Pete Hamill

Journalist Pete Hamill. He's written a new book, a long essay really, about the troubled state of newspapers in this country. It's called "News is a Verb: Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century" (The Library of Contemporary Thought, The Ballantine Publishing Group). Hamill is also the author of the bestselling novel, "Snow in August," and the memoir, "A Drinking Life." (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

Novelist, journalist and columnist Pete Hamill. He's written seven novels, including "Flesh and Blood," and "Loving Women." Most recently he was editor-in-chief at the New York Post. He's latest book is a memoir of the years he spent drinking, "A Drinking Life: A Memoir," (Little, Brown & Co.) Hamill quit drinking twenty years ago. One reviewer in Publishers Weekly writes about Hamill's new memoir, "This is not a jeremiad condemning drink, however, but a thoughtful, funny, street-smart reflection on its consequences."

Hamill's first book of fiction is called Loving Women, about a man who joins the Navy in the 1950s. Hamill wrote for a number of New York City newspapers, and recently left the New York Post after an editorial dispute.