Washington Confidential

by Jack Lait, Lee Mortimer

Overview

Scandalous, shocking, cheeky, impudent are words that will be used to describe this account of the hidden side of our glamorous, riotous capital city.

For Lait and Mortimer, famous newspapermen, mince no words, pull no punches, tell their story in their own bold way. They have found out the truth and they tell the facts and name the names—which no one dared write or publish before. They deglamorize Washington and reveal it with its spats off and its morning coat unbuttoned. They tear the Velvet Curtain and show the behind-the-scenes intrigue, the sub-rosa night life, the shady side of sex, the sin side, the crime side. The amazing things they report will shock millions, arouse citizens all over the country as their previous book Chicago Confidential did…

“P-S-S-S-T!

“Here we go again—Confidential.

“We turned New York inside out; but we both live there. We turned Chicago upside down; but we were both raised there. We descended on Washington not quite like Stanley invaded Africa, because in our combined 75 years of newspaper work we had been in the capital hundreds of times. It intrigued us because we never could understand it. So we decided brashly to do a Lait-Mortimer operation on it from scratch. Our principal discovery was that nobody understands Washington—the city, not the nation’s nerve-center.

[…]

“That’s why we were born—to tell you what you couldn’t find out without us—Confidential!”—Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781787209527
Publisher:	Papamoa Press
Publication date:	02/27/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	356
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

JACK LAIT (1883-1954) was an American journalist, author and playwright, best known for his series of ‘Confidential’ books.

Born Jacquin Leonard Lait in New York City on March 13, 1883, he became renowned during his 50-year career in journalism as one of the leading newspapermen of the first half of the 20th century. He wrote a syndicated column, All in the Family, for two decades, and his comic strip, Gus and Gussie ran from 1925-1930.

He was the editor of the New York Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror, and later worked for the Hearst Corporation. During his tenure as editor, the New York Daily Mirror gained the second highest circulation of any U.S. newspaper.

With Lee Mortimer, Lait wrote New York Confidential, Chicago Confidential and Washington Confidential, which became a 1951 bestseller. Their books inspired the films New York Confidential (1955) and Chicago Confidential (1957) and the television series New York Confidential.

Lait died in Beverly Hills, California on April 1, 1954.

LEE MORTIMER (1904-1963) was an American newspaper columnist, radio commentator, crime lecturer, night club show producer, and author.

Born Mortimer Lieberman in Chicago, Illinois in 1904, the eldest son of first generation immigrants from the Ukraine and Sweden, Nathan and Rose Lieberman, he attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., before moving to New York City to work as an editor for Amusements Magazine, adopting the pen name Lee Mortimer.

In 1932, he began his long-term association with the New York Mirror, initially as a reporter and critic, and later writing a long-running Broadway gossip column. He worked for editor Jack Lait, with whom he later penned a series of bestselling crime books, following a stint as a first lieutenant in the Signal Corps from 1942-1943. He also wrote ‘New York Behind the Scenes’ and ‘Women: Confidential’ and later lectured on crime and communism.