Join a literary insider for a behind-the-scenes tour of art heists, opera icons, and the golden age of publishing.

From the author of Scribners: Five Generations in Publishing comes this new collection of personal essays reflecting on the past fifty years of his pursuits and passions in literature, art, and music. Beginning with a memoir of his father’s tutelage through letters to a young son away at school, it moves along to his “dual professions” on parallel tracks—book publishing and art history.

Behind-the-scenes stories of famous Scribner authors F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe give way to the section on Scribner’s forte, the art of the Baroque masters: a murderous Caravaggio and the two tycoons Rubens and Bernini.

From his role in a sting operation to recover a stolen Rubens painting on Miami Beach to his personal profiles of three luminous sopranos—Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Frederica von Stade, and Mary Costa—Scribner shares a fascinating peek into the life and loves of a Renaissance man.