My forthcoming book, on legendary New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, will be published by New York Review Books on February 9, 2027.
Pre-order The Lost Years of Joseph Mitchell from your independent bookstore, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.
“With economy, precision, and deep feeling, Scott Schomburg gives us Joseph Mitchell up close—his empathy, his lyricism, his shyness, his morbid thoughts, his deep appreciations. It's heart-filling, happy and sad at once. As a bonus, it contains a small anthology of unpublished Mitchell that lets us hear his voice again and marvel at his bountiful plain style.”
—Lucy Sante, author of Low Life
A fascinating, lyrical account of the lesser-known later life of one of New York’s greatest chroniclers, this book is also a pocket guide for reading and writing and looking and connecting with the world around us. There are so many incredible passages–from both Mitchell and Schomburg–that I stopped writing them down, as it would mean transcribing the whole book.
—Prudence Peiffer, author of The Slip