Rich Cohen

Journalist Rich Cohen began his career as a messenger at The New Yorker, where he managed to write a dozen "Talk of the Town" pieces in just 18 months. Cohen's reporting has appeared in publications including Vanity Fair, Harper's and Rolling Stone, and he is a contributing editor for both Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Tough Jews, Cohen's first book, is a sharp, fast-paced account of Jewish gangsters who lived in Brooklyn in the 1930s. From that 1998 debut to Cohen's most recent work, Israel Is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and its History, the clarity, energy and humor of his writing has been noted alongside his journalistic prowess. Cohen's storytelling gifts - that facility for bringing to life both past and current figures - have been trained on numerous subjects, including profiles of Buddy Guy and Clive Davis, an "Ode to Sleep Away Camp," and the indelible historical view of "The Hitler Mustache." In Israel Is Real, he entertains all sides of the argument about Jewish identity.