The World of Jimmy Breslin

The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist's early columns "peopled by some of the funniest, looniest and saddest characters anywhere outside of a zoo" (The New York Times).

In the 1960s, as the once-proud New York Herald Tribune spiraled into bankruptcy, the brightest light in its pages was an ebullient young columnist named Jimmy Breslin. While ordinary columnists wrote about politics, culture, or the economy, Breslin's chief topics were the city and Breslin himself. He was chummy with cops,...