Rich Cohen (born July 30, 1968) is an American
non-fiction
Non-fiction (or nonfiction) is any document or content (media), media content that attempts, in good faith, to convey information only about the real life, real world, rather than being grounded in imagination. Non-fiction typically aims to pre ...
writer. He is a contributing editor at ''
Vanity Fair'' and ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
''. He is co-creator, with
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November17, 1942) is an American filmmaker. One of the major figures of the New Hollywood era, he has received List of awards and nominations received by Martin Scorsese, many accolades, including an Academ ...
,
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English musician. He is known as the lead singer and one of the founder members of The Rolling Stones. Jagger has co-written most of the band's songs with lead guitarist Keith Richards; Jagge ...
and
Terence Winter
Terence Patrick Winter (born October 2, 1960) is an American writer and producer of television and film. He was the creator, writer, and executive producer of the HBO television series '' Boardwalk Empire'' (2010–2014). Before creating ''Boar ...
, of the
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...
series ''
Vinyl
Vinyl may refer to:
Chemistry
* Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a particular vinyl polymer
* Vinyl cation, a type of carbocation
* Vinyl group, a broad class of organic molecules in chemistry
* Vinyl polymer, a group of polymers derived from vinyl ...
''. His works have been ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' bestsellers, ''New York Times'' Notable Books, and have been collected in the
Best American Essays series. He lives in
Ridgefield, Connecticut
Ridgefield is an affluent New England town, town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. Situated in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains and on the New York state border, Ridgefield had a population o ...
, with his wife and children.
He is not to be confused with
Richard A. Cohen.
Early life
Cohen was born into a Jewish family in
Lake Forest, Illinois
Lake Forest is a city located in Lake County, Illinois, United States. Per the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 19,367. The city is along the shore of Lake Michigan, and is a part of the Chicago metropolitan area and t ...
, and grew up in Chicago's North Shore suburb of
Glencoe. He received his BA from
Tulane University
The Tulane University of Louisiana (commonly referred to as Tulane University) is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by a cohort of medical doctors, it b ...
in 1990. His father, the negotiator
Herb Cohen
Herbert Cohen (December 30, 1932 – March 16, 2010) was an American personal manager, record company executive, and music publisher, best known as the manager of Judy Henske, Linda Ronstadt, Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, Odetta, Tom Waits, Geor ...
, grew up with the broadcaster
Larry King
Larry King (born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger; November 19, 1933 – January 23, 2021) was an American TV and radio host presenter, author, and former spokesman. He was a WMBM radio interviewer in the Miami area in the 1950s and 1960s and beginning in ...
; Cohen worked on King's CNN show for a short time after graduation. His sister, Sharon Cohen Levin, is an Assistant United States Attorney of the Southern District of New York. His brother, Steve Cohen, a former aide to New York governor
Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Mark Cuomo ( , ; born December 6, 1957) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 56th governor of New York from 2011 until his resignation in 2021. A member of the Democratic Party and son of former governor Mario Cuomo, ...
, is a partner at the law firm Zuckerman Spaeder in New York City.
Career
Journalism
An admirer of the works of journalists
A. J. Liebling,
Ian Frazier
Ian Frazier (born 1951 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American writer and humorist. He wrote the 1989 non-fiction history ''Great Plains'', 2010's non-fiction travelogue ''Travels in Siberia'', and works as a writer and humorist for ''The New Yorker ...
, and
Joseph Mitchell, Cohen took a job as a messenger at the offices of ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' magazine, where he published twelve stories in the "Talk of the Town" section in eighteen months. After working as a reporter for the ''
New York Observer
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
** "New" (Paul McCartney song), 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, 1995
* "New" (Daya song), 2017
* "New" (No Doubt song), 1 ...
'', in 1994 Cohen joined the staff of ''Rolling Stone''. Since 2007, he has been a contributing editor at ''Vanity Fair''. In 2022, Cohen became a columnist for the ''
Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
''.
Author
Cohen published his first book ''Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams''—a non-fiction account of the
Jewish gangsters of 1930s Brooklyn, notably those involved with
Murder, Inc.—in 1998. Cohen's second work, ''The Avengers: A Jewish War Story'' (2000), follows a group of
anti-Nazi partisans in the forests of Lithuania at the close of World War II.
Cohen's third work, the memoir ''Lake Effect'' was published in 2002. In 2006, Cohen published ''Sweet and Low: A Family Story'', a memoir about the creation of the
artificial sweetener
A sugar substitute or artificial sweetener, is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie () or low-calorie sweetener. Arti ...
, a product invented by
Benjamin Eisenstadt, Cohen's grandfather.
In 2009, Cohen published ''Israel is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and its History''. In 2010, Cohen co-wrote the memoir ''When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead'', the story of American film producer
Jerry Weintraub
Jerome Charles Weintraub (September 26, 1937 – July 6, 2015) was an American film producer, talent manager and actor whose television films won him three Emmys.
He began his career as a talent agent, having managed known singer John Denver in ...
. The book was a ''New York Times'' bestseller.
Cohen's story of
United Fruit president and banana king
Sam Zemurray, ''The Fish That Ate the Whale'', was published by
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...
in 2012. In 2013, Cohen published ''Monsters'': ''The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football'', a story of football through the eyes of the 1985
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They are one of two remaining ...
. The book was a ''New York Times'' best seller. Cohen's next book, a narrative history of
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the Album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pione ...
called ''The Sun and The Moon and the Rolling Stones'', was published by
Spiegel and Grau in May 2016.
[''The Sun and the Moon and the Rolling Stone'']
Penguin Random House Website. Accessed 2016-01-03. Cohen had been on close terms with the Rolling Stones since the mid-1990s.
In May 2022, Cohen published ''The Adventures of Herbie Cohen, World's Greatest Negotiator'', about Cohen's father,
Herb Cohen
Herbert Cohen (December 30, 1932 – March 16, 2010) was an American personal manager, record company executive, and music publisher, best known as the manager of Judy Henske, Linda Ronstadt, Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, Odetta, Tom Waits, Geor ...
.
Film and television
On February 26, 2007,
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...
announced it had closed a deal to produce ''The Long Play'', a screenplay which Cohen wrote several drafts for and did research on, for producers Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese, with Scorsese directing.
In 2012 and 2013 Cohen was an advisor on the Starz series ''
Magic City''.
Cohen is a co-creator, with Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger and Terence Winter, of the HBO series ''Vinyl''.
[Tim Goodmen, "'Vinyl': TV Review"]
''Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
'', February 2, 2016.
Critical reception
In 2013, NPR editor
Tina Brown
Christina Hambley Brown, Lady Evans (born in England on 21 November 1953), is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, broadcaster, and author, with dual British/United States citizenship. She is the former editor in chief of '' Tatler'' (197 ...
called Cohen's essay on the financier Ted Forstmann "very entertaining" and a "must read".
In ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'', writer
Vincent Patrick called Cohen's book ''Tough Jews'' "marvelous and colorful" with "writing good enough to cause one, at times, to reread a page in order to savor the description". Another ''New York Times'' critic
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (June 14, 1934 – November 7, 2018) was an American journalist, editor of ''The New York Times Book Review'', critic, and novelist, based in New York City. He served as senior Daily Book Reviewer from 1969 to 1995.
Bi ...
, called it "exuberant" and "a vivid narrative"; Cohen's book had "taken the noise of these facts and turned it from gunfire into a kind of music".
Critic
Michiko Kakutani
is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for ''The New York Times'' from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Early life and family
Kakutani, a Japanese Americ ...
called Cohen's ''Sweet and Low'' "a classic" ... "A telling—and often hilarious—parable about the pursuit and costs of the American Dream". In 2006, the book made the ''New York Times'' list of 100 notable books.
In ''The New York Times Book Review'', writer
Tony Horwitz said ''Israel is Real'' "accomplished the miraculous. It made a subject that has vexed me since childhood into a riveting story."
Critic and historian Mark Lewis called ''The Fish That Ate the Whale'' "
Kiplingesque" and "fascinating." In ''
The Christian Science Monitor
''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles both in Electronic publishing, electronic format and a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 ...
'', critic Chris Hartman called the book "masterful and elegantly written ... a cautionary tale for the ages".
Reviewing ''The Last Pirate of New York'' in the ''Wall Street Journal'', Rinker Buck wrote, "'The Last Pirate of New York' is history-lite at its best, and readers will finish it with a satisfaction deeply relevant today."
Awards
*2009
The Best American Essays of 2008
Select bibliography
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Ghostwritten
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References
External links
Official website* NPR's Weekend Edition
''The Fish That Ate The Whale''* CBS News
''The Fish That Ate The Whale''* Appearance o
All Things Considered* Appearance on NPR'
The Leonard Lopate Show 2006* Appearance on NPR'
The Leonard Lopate Show 2005 in ''The New York Times Book Review''
''The Avengers'' Excerpt Newsweek Magazine
* Random Hous
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Rich
Jewish American journalists
Jewish American non-fiction writers
American male journalists
American male non-fiction writers
Tulane University alumni
1968 births
Living people
American magazine journalists
21st-century American Jews