Andrew Holter, ed., "Going Around: Selected Journalism / Murray Kempton" (Seven Stories Press, 2025)

New Books in Biography & Memoir · May 19, 2025 · 1h

From 1949 until his death in 1997, Murray Kempton was a distinct presence in New York City journalism. Peddling around town on a three-speed bicycle wearing a three-piece suit, he wrote about everything from politics to jazz to the Mafia. His writing was eloquent, his perspective unique, and his moral judgements driven by a profound sympathy for losers, dissenters and underdogs. His best-known work was written for the New York Post, New York Newsday, and later the New York Review of Books.

Kempton could find a good story in a criminal trial or a bureaucratic report, and he peppered his…