The King of the Ferret Leggers and Other True Stories

May 14, 2001
Katz, whose Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America
was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, has had a long, eclectic career as a journalist writing for the New Republic, Esquire, Sports Illustrated
and Outside,
along with being a contributing editor to Rolling Stone.
This collection highlights 25 years of his most memorable profiles of people who have been in the spotlight because of their passion, creativity, commitment, knowledge, courage or even insanity. Katz pursues every one of his subjects, whether serious or amusing, with equal fervor and writes about them with equal skill. Even if readers are unfamiliar with some subjects, not one profile falls short of fascinating. With his profiles of the remarkable, including champion ferret legger Reg Mellor, draft-dodger-pushed-into-the-political-spotlight Fritz Efaw, famed political cartoonist Bill Mauldin, nature photographer and activist Peter Beard, fitness guru Jack LaLanne or the victims of the Long Island Railroad massacre of 1993, Katz leaves no question unexplored. He captures the eccentric yet human qualities of his subjects, centering on their dreams, frustrations, motivations and struggles. He even explores his own psyche in the final piece about his adventures in physical fitness on the verge of 40. Katz's writing seems effortless, as if his subjects do all the work, but this is only because his pen is as well trained to tell a story as his ear is to hear one. (On-sale date: May 29)FYI: This title has also been issued by AtRandom.com as an e-book, $9.95. AtRandom.com will be coordinating all publicity with Audible.com, an e-audio Web site that Katz founded.

May 15, 2001
The 11 profiles in this eclectic work introduce a wide range of individuals interviewed by Rolling Stone contributing editor Katz (Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World) between 1976 and 1995. The personalities on display here include the strange and "ferret legger," who ties his pant legs at the ankles and inserts a ferret into his trousers; a voyeur whose life revolves around secretly videotaping the private lives of strangers; the fascinating Paul Hawken, a guru of the new economy; and the survivors of a massacre of commuters on a 5:33 p.m. train out of Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station. Katz, who has published these pieces in Outside, GEO, Playboy, Esquire, and other magazines, is a master storyteller, and the profiles resonate with quality language, sense of place, and the vivid personalities of the individuals. Recommended for all public and academic libraries. Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana, Missoula

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.