Join us for the paperback release of this New York Times Bestseller —From the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing—and one of the most decorated journalists of our time—twelve enthralling stories of skulduggery and intrigue.
Patrick Radden Keefe has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award to the Orwell Prize to the National Book Critics Circle Award for his meticulously-reported, hypnotically-engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from The New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface “They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.”
Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death penalty attorney who represents the “worst of the worst,” among other bravura works of literary journalism.
The appearance of his byline in The New Yorker is always an event, and collected here for the first time readers can see his work forms an always enthralling but deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up against them.
About the Author
Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker and the bestselling author of five books, including Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, which received the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the FT Business Book of the Year, and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent book is Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks. The recipient of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, he is also the creator and host of the 8-part podcast "Wind of Change," about the strange intersection of Cold War espionage and heavy metal music, which was named the #1 podcast of 2020 by Entertainment Weekly and the Guardian and has been downloaded more than 10 million times. He grew up in Boston and now lives in New York.
The Elson Lectures are made possible with generous funding from Ambassador and Mrs. Edward Elson.
About the Moderator
Virginia Prescott is President of Audio at School of Humans. The Atlanta and LA-based production company boasts a slate of top-10 podcasts distributed by iHeartMedia including Hell & Gone, Unreformed and Astray. She gathered an impressive collection of tote bags over decades in public media and earned her audio chops as producer and director for NPR’s On Point and Here and Now, and on the Peabody Award- winning team behind Jazz from Lincoln Center with Ed Bradley. Virginia has worked at stations throughout the U.S. (WWOZ, WNYC, WBUR, NHPR and GPB), in conflict zones from the Balkans to Sierra Leone, and has been honored with a Gracie Award for Outstanding Host, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Loeb Fellowship from Harvard University.
Promotional language provided by publisher.