Thomas Vinciguerra

Thomas Vinciguerra is the author of Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E.B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of The New Yorker.

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HANGING IT UP

I Ditched My Landline—Cutting the Cord of Memory Is Harder

The home telephone, whether rotary dial or push-button, is dying, but the memories associated with it prove infinitely more durable.

Thomas Vinciguerra

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TURF WARS

Is 'Get Off My Lawn' Buried in a Mortgage's Fine Print?

He bought his childhood home, and suddenly the sight of beer cans thrown on his yard felt like a call to arms.

Thomas Vinciguerra

MESMERIZING

Roy Cohn's Diabolical Magnetism

Joe McCarthy’s lieutenant, Donald Trump’s mouthpiece—Cohn was a human car crash that even 30 years after his death we can’t stop watching.

Thomas Vinciguerra

OBSOLETE

MAD Magazine Taught Us to Laugh but Now We Laugh at It

Had the venerable satirical magazine never existed, there might have been no SNL, no Letterman, no Stewart. But as its apt pupils went mainstream, MAD itself became redundant.

Thomas Vinciguerra

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RELIC

It’s High Time to Bury Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’

The newsweekly’s Person of the Year feature, once a portentous signifier of national and even international import, has been a running joke for decades. Now it’s not even funny.

Thomas Vinciguerra

I Ditched My Landline—Cutting the Cord of Memory Is Harder

Is 'Get Off My Lawn' Buried in a Mortgage's Fine Print?

Roy Cohn's Diabolical Magnetism

MAD Magazine Taught Us to Laugh but Now We Laugh at It

It’s High Time to Bury Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’

Where Thurber and Co. Knocked It Back