Dan Rattiner's STILL IN THE HAMPTONS to Debut 7/15

"Still In The Hamptons," the third in a trio of memoirs by Dan Rattiner (founder of Dan's Papers) about his time in the Hamptons, will be published on July 1st, 2012, by SUNY Press. It should be available in all bookstores shortly thereafter.

In the book, you will read about the Annual Artists & Writers Softball Game with Christie Brinkley, Mort Zuckerman, and Alec Baldwin; about adventurer Peter Beard and the loss of his house to fire; about the attempt to have "the Hamptons" secede from the United States; about the favor done to promote the how-to sex book by Kim Cattrall and Mark Levinson; about a duel between the publisher and a disgruntled reader, about WLNG disk jockey legend Paul Sidney and his coverage of an antique car race, and about the time Montauk Fishing boat captain Carl Darenberg, hired to tow the three story Napeague Coast Guard station to Montauk on a barge ten miles through Gardiner's Bay, had the job go fine until, halfway, a strong wind began to blow the big house out of control and off into the Atlantic.

The Hamptons in 2012 are a string of beautiful old New England towns strung out on the eastern tip of Long Island that are today a glittering resort filled with movie stars, billionaires, Broadway show producers, artists, and writers.

In 1960, however, Dan founded Dan*s Papers as a small, weekly newspaper in this community, and at that time Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, there were three channels on TV, cars had tailfins, gas was twenty-nine cents a gallon, and the community of local people largely made their living farming, clamming, and fishing. There were also some wealthy bankers who owned mansions on the beach that also came out too in the summertime, and there were a few artists and writers living in seclusion in houses tucked away in the woods. The rest of the people coming out here were tourists.

Over the years, Dan's Papers grew and soon became the premier newspaper in the community. Also, the Hamptons became "the Hamptons." Having watched this transformation in fascination, Dan offers up, in the pages of this memoir a series of original behind-the-scenes stories about some of the people he has met along the way, both plain and fancy, whose lives intertwined with his, usually, at first anyway, because he wrote the newspaper.

"In the Hamptons," as with the earlier books, presents the people and events are presented in chronological order from 1959 to today, just as Dan lived and remembered them. He hopes that you enjoy this new memoir, and that it adds to your understanding of what the Hamptons was and has become.

If you like this book, you will probably also enjoy the earlier memoirs. "In the Hamptons" (2008) and "In the Hamptons Too" (2010) are other recollections of his interactions with farmers, fishermen, artists, billionaires, and celebrities in the Hamptons, and both of these books, as is this one, are available either online or at local bookstores.

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