Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The Tender Bar

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The Tender Bar

J.R. Moehringer (pronounced Morier), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2000, is a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and a former Niemann Fellow at Harvard University. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Almost 50 Manhasset residents were killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. One was a Dickens bartender, another was a cousin of  Moehringer.  As the reviewer for Publishers Weekly so aptly put it, "Moehringer's lovely evocation of an ordinary place filled with ordinary people gives dignity and meaning to those lost lives, and to his own."

The bar formerly known as Gino's, Dickens and Publicans is now called Edisons. It can be found at 550 Plandome Rd, Manhasset on Long Island. Although the pub remains, Manhasset has "come up" a lot in the 20 to 30 years since Moehringer frequented Dickens.  In 2005 the average price of a home in the greater Manhasset area was $1.35 million - in large part due to its location about 30 minutes from Manhattan and its excellent schools.

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This "beyond the book article" relates to The Tender Bar. It originally ran in October 2005 and has been updated for the August 2006 paperback edition. Go to magazine.