Considered the equal to White, Thurber and Liebling during his three decades at The New Yorker, from the late 1920s until his death in 1958, Gibbs was a mainstay of the magazine.  He published poems, short stories, profiles, casuals and acted as the magazine’s theater critic.   He also found time to write a hit play, Season in the Sun, that was based on a series of short stories he had published in The New Yorker.

Starting with its first issue, The New Yorker became known for its short and witty pieces on life in New York that appeared at the front of every issue. Until 1990 the pieces were unsigned, but through research, editor Lillian Ross was able to find out who wrote these early essays. Authors include E.B. White, George Plimpton, Ian Frazier, John McPhee, Bill McKibben, Roger Angell, Julian Barnes, and Susan Orlean.

With approximately 230 short stories published in the magazine, John O'Hara is often called the progenitor of The New Yorker short story style. Many of O'Hara's stories were set in Gibbsville, PA, a fictionalized version of his hometown of Pottsville, with the major theme of his writing being social class. Much of his literary reputation comes from his short stories, although O'Hara was as highly acclaimed for his first novel, Appointment in Samarra.

Brendan Gill served in a variety of roles for The New Yorker during its glory years, and he profiles the magazine and his fellow writers in this gossipy and admittedly "highly biased" best seller. Many of his surviving colleagues complained about the book's accuracy when it was published, but it remains a great source of information about the inner workings of the magazine during its most famous period.

It is probably harder to come up with a list of prominent American writers of the 20th century whose bylines did not appear in The New Yorker than those who did. One author of note who will probably never appear in the magazine is Tom Wolfe. In 1965, many people felt that The New Yorker had grown staid and long-winded, and Wolfe wrote a hilarious but controversial two-part profile of its editor, William Shawn, for New York magazine. Those two articles, "Tiny Mummies!" and "Lost in the Whichy Thickets," are included in this collection.

A. J. Liebling came to The New Yorker in 1935 and stayed until his death in 1963. A true trencherman, Liebling often wrote about food and drink for the magazine and was an expert on boxing and horse racing as well. He spent much of World War II in the European theater. The Library of America has also collected his war correspondence for The New Yorker in a volume called World War II Writings.

Contains some of the most famous magazine profiles ever written, including Janet Flanner on Isadora Duncan, Kenneth Tynan on Johnny Carson, Lillian Ross on Ernest Hemingway, Wolcott Gibbs on Henry Luce, and Truman Capote on Marlon Brando. Also included are pieces by Susan Orlean, Calvin Trillin, John McPhee, Janet Malcolm and others.

Writing for the magazine from the 1930s through the 1960s, McKelway specialized in light true crime stories about arsonists, embezzlers, counterfeiters, suspected Communists, and innocent men and the fire investigators, forensic accountants, Secret Service men, clueless FBI agents, and biased cops who pursued them.

An anthology of short fiction about the city of New York that appeared during the magazine's first 75 years. Includes stories by Saul Bellow, John Cheever, John Updike, Philip Roth, William Maxwell, Lorrie Moore, Ann Beattie, Susan Sontag and Dorothy Parker.