The enviable life of a true American publisher

Fewer people in the world had access to the personal moments experienced by Steve Wasserman, Heyday Books publisher, former LA Times Book Review editor and former editor at several of the nation’s most prominent book publishing houses. In his latest book, “Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It's a Lie,” he details his close encounters with a handful of some of the most significant people in the 20th century, including Jackie Kennedy, Susan Sontag, Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, Barbra Streisand, Huey Newton and others.

Wasserman describes these accounts, or portraits, as focusing on people who “inspired me to do what I could, however modestly, to live a life of passionate engagement.”

From the intimate details of a lunch with Jackie O to a deathbed conversation with writer and journalist Hitchens, Wasserman features a multitude of essays that cover a range of issues from politics to literature to culture and life. One memory of Wasserman included how he “never experienced Susan Sontag as a hostage to nostalgia.” Wasserman found inspiration in that and thought “it was a great, great lesson not to become pickled in your own prejudices such that you couldn't be open to the world.”

Scheer attests that these portraits are brilliant, especially when dealing with controversial figures. He tells Wasserman, “These are famous intellectuals, but you humanize them, and you involve your own criticism.”