In the Hamptons: My Fifty Years with Farmers, Fishermen, Artists, Billionaires, and Celebrities | 
 enlarge | Author: Dan Rattiner
Publisher: Harmony
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $9.27
You Save: $15.68 (63%)
New (32) Used (12) from $8.75
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 81607
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.4
ISBN: 0307382958
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.725043092
EAN: 9780307382955
ASIN: 0307382958
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Long before the Hamptons became famous for its posh parties, paparazzi, and glitterati, it was a sleepy backwater of fishing villages and potato farms, literary luminaries and local eccentrics. As the editor and publisher of the area’s popular free newspaper, Dan’s Papers, Dan Rattiner, has been covering the daily triumphs, community intrigues, and larger-than-life personalities for nearly fifty years.
A colorful insider’s account of life, love, scandal, and celebrity, In the Hamptons is an intimate portrait of a place and the people who formed and transformed it, from former residents like Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning, colorful locals like bar owner Bobby Van and shark fisherman Frank Mundus (who the character Quinn from Jaws was based on), and literary figures like John Steinbeck and Truman Capote, to present-day stars like Bianca Jagger and Billy Joel.
An insider who lived there—as well as a Jewish outsider amid the WASP contingent—Rattiner both revels in and is rattled by all he witnesses and records in one of the world’s most famous places. With dry wit and genuine affection, he shares a story of the Hamptons that few know, one defined by the artists, painters, fishermen, farmers, dreamers, hangers-on, celebrities, and billionaires who live and play there.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Predictably Terrific August 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
DAN'S PAPERS are a local institution in The Hamptons, where I live myself. And, yes, there really is a Dan.
And it's Dan Rattiner who, for about the past 45 years, has made his papers great. (Actually, by now, there are just two editions, a small one for Montauk, at the extreme end of Long Island, where Dan grew up himself, and a large one that serves a widespread region.)
Though Dan was not born in The Hamptons, he did move here as a teenager, more than a half century ago. From the reminiscences in his memoir, IN THE HAMPTONS, he always had the keen eye of an observer, even when he still was an architectural student at Harvard.
Dan writes in an easy, effortless style and he appears to miss no details -- ever. Except when the subject is serious, his pieces are suffused with humor, and he does not suffer fools gracefully. Issues of DAN'S PAPERS may have as many as six, even eight, pieces that he has written.
I feel fair in saying that everyone who lives in The Hamptons -- indeed, everyone on the entire eastern end of Long Island -- loves this weekly news magazine.
So it was with great interest that most of us awaited the publication of IN THE HAMPTONS.
Knowing Dan's style, the book is everything one could expect. He effortlessly covers the long history of this area, first settled in 1639, when the Gardiner family arrived from England.
By virtue of his long tenure here, he pretty much has seen it all and he definitely remembers all that he saw.
Dan offers wonderful anecdotes about the ROLLING STONES, Bianca Jagger, Andy Warhol, the family of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the other early-arriving socialites -- Mrs. Onassis actually was born in East Hampton -- the rock stars such as Billy Joel and Paul Simon, the visitors like Bill Clinton, so many artists and writers that they have an annual charity softball game, and on and on. And on.
All of Dan's anecdotes, without exception, are fascinating, and each one is reported in Dan's literally inimitable prose.
On the other hand, in an area so rich in history and accomplishment, Dan obviously had to choose among his favorite topics to tell his story, and he had to have left out more than he could include. Lots of authors, media people, fine artists, rock stars, movie stars, billionaires, and leading classical musicians were not even mentioned.
I can't wait to read the sequel of IN THE HAMPTONS.
Great stories of the East End June 28, 2008
I've been around as long as Dan's Papers and remember in the early years Dan Rattiner had several summer papers such as the East Hampton Summer Sun. the Sag Harbor Pilot etc. The stories Dan wrote were always great and my favorite was local history. As Dan's business grew all these local summer weekly throwaways were incorporated into one paper, Dan's Papers. With the exception being I believe the Montauk Pioneer. Anyway, This new book from Dan is great. I remember alot of this stuff from the 60's and 70's, as it appeared in his paper, but he has rewritten it and it is still an enjoyable read. A book I would highly recommend to anyone. I still long for the time in the 1960's, when I could pick up a copy of the East Hampton Summer Sun at the A&P on Newtown Lane, but that of course is not possible. Thank you Dan for 48 years of pleasurable reading. P.S. Was anyone ever electrocuted for copying that local map you use to have in the back of your newspaper?
 Interesting, Anecdotal Book June 27, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Being a Long Islander who spents some time in the Hamptons and Montauk, I found this book interesting. Its chapters contained anecdotal stories of events and people. Nice, easy, summer read.
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