High Notes contains all the reasons I've been teaching Gay Talese's work to my students at Yale for a decade, and all the reasons they love it. There are scenes described in such vivid detail you feel you're standing inside them; peripheral characters whom only Talese would care about and who are far more interesting than the ones in the center; details that no other writer would notice because no one has Talese's eyes and Talese's ears. This is glorious journalism. Ann Fadiman, author of EX LIBRIS and AT LARGE and AT SMALL sakriti opis