<DIV>For more than seven decades, the <I>New Yorker</I> has been the embodiment of urban sophistication and literary accomplishment, the magazine where the best work of virtually every prose giant of the century first appeared. With all the authority and elegance such a subject demands, Yagoda tells the fascinating story of the tiny journal that grew into a literary enterprise of epic proportions. Incorporating interviews with more than fifty former and current <I>New Yorker</I> writers, including the late Joseph Mitchell, Roger Angell, the late Pauline Kael, Calvin Trillin, and Ann Beattie, Yagoda is the first author to make extensive use of the <I>New Yorker</I>'s archives. <I>About Town</I> penetrates the inner workings of the <I>New Yorker</I> as no other book has done, opening a window on a lost age.</Div>