Rich Cohen (born July 30, 1968) is an Americannon-fiction writer. He is a contributing editor atVanity Fair andRolling Stone. He is co-creator, withMartin Scorsese,Mick Jagger andTerence Winter, of theHBO seriesVinyl. His works have beenNew York Times bestsellers,New York Times Notable Books, and have been collected in theBest American Essays series. He lives inRidgefield, Connecticut, with his wife and children.

He is not to be confused withRichard A. Cohen.

Cohen was born into a Jewish family inLake Forest, Illinois, and grew up in Chicago's North Shore suburb ofGlencoe.^[1] He received his BA fromTulane University in 1990. His father, the negotiatorHerb Cohen, grew up with the broadcasterLarry King; Cohen worked on King's CNN show for a short time after graduation.^[2] His sister, Sharon Cohen Levin, is an Assistant United States Attorney of the Southern District of New York. His brother, Steve Cohen, a former aide to New York governorAndrew Cuomo, is a partner at the law firm Zuckerman Spaeder in New York City.^[3]

An admirer of the works of journalistsA. J. Liebling,Ian Frazier, andJoseph Mitchell, Cohen took a job as a messenger at the offices ofThe New Yorker magazine,^[4] where he published twelve stories in the "Talk of the Town" section in eighteen months.^[5] After working as a reporter for theNew York Observer, in 1994 Cohen joined the staff ofRolling Stone. Since 2007, he has been a contributing editor atVanity Fair. In 2022, Cohen became a columnist for theWall Street Journal.^[6]

Cohen published his first bookTough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams—a non-fiction account of theJewish gangsters of 1930s Brooklyn, notably those involved withMurder, Inc.—in 1998. Cohen's second work,The Avengers: A Jewish War Story (2000), follows a group ofanti-Nazi partisans in the forests of Lithuania at the close of World War II.^[7]

Cohen's third work, the memoirLake Effect was published in 2002. In 2006, Cohen publishedSweet and Low: A Family Story, a memoir about the creation of theartificial sweetener, a product invented byBenjamin Eisenstadt, Cohen's grandfather.

In 2009, Cohen publishedIsrael is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and its History. In 2010, Cohen co-wrote the memoirWhen I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead, the story of American film producerJerry Weintraub. The book was aNew York Times bestseller.^[8]

Cohen's story ofUnited Fruit president and banana kingSam Zemurray,The Fish That Ate the Whale, was published byFarrar, Straus & Giroux in 2012.^[9] In 2013, Cohen publishedMonsters:The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, a story of football through the eyes of the 1985Chicago Bears. The book was aNew York Times best seller.^[10] Cohen's next book, a narrative history ofThe Rolling Stones calledThe Sun and The Moon and the Rolling Stones, was published bySpiegel and Grau in May 2016.^[11] Cohen had been on close terms with the Rolling Stones since the mid-1990s.^[12]

Cohen's 2019 book,The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation, details the life and times ofAlbert W. Hicks, an American criminal active from about 1840 to 1860.

In 2021 and 2022, Cohen published a pair of memoirs: one about fatherhood, the second about his own father.Pee Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent appeared in early 2021; it is an examination of the explosion of youth hockey, through the story of Cohen and his son. In May 2022, Cohen publishedThe Adventures of Herbie Cohen, World's Greatest Negotiator, telling the story of his father, thenegotiation expertHerb Cohen.

In September 2023,Random House will publish Cohen'sWhen the Game was War: the NBA's Greatest Season. It is about the rivalry betweenNBA greatsMagic Johnson,Larry Bird,Isiah Thomas, andMichael Jordan.

On February 26, 2007,Paramount Pictures announced it had closed a deal to produceThe Long Play, a screenplay which Cohen wrote several drafts for and did research on, for producers Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese, with Scorsese directing.^[13]

In 2012 and 2013 Cohen was an advisor on the Starz seriesMagic City.^[14]

Cohen is a co-creator, with Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger and Terence Winter, of the HBO seriesVinyl.^[15]

In 2013, NPR editorTina Brown called Cohen's essay on the financier Ted Forstmann "very entertaining" and a "must read".^[16]

InThe New York Times Book Review, writerVincent Patrick called Cohen's bookTough Jews "marvelous and colorful" with "writing good enough to cause one, at times, to reread a page in order to savor the description".^[17] AnotherNew York Times criticChristopher Lehmann-Haupt, called it "exuberant" and "a vivid narrative"; Cohen's book had "taken the noise of these facts and turned it from gunfire into a kind of music".^[18]

CriticMichiko Kakutani called Cohen'sSweet and Low "a classic" ... "A telling—and often hilarious—parable about the pursuit and costs of the American Dream".^[19] In 2006, the book made theNew York Times list of 100 notable books.^[20]

InThe New York Times Book Review, writerTony Horwitz saidIsrael is Real "accomplished the miraculous. It made a subject that has vexed me since childhood into a riveting story."^[21]

Critic and historian Mark Lewis calledThe Fish That Ate the Whale "Kiplingesque" and "fascinating."^[22] InThe Christian Science Monitor, critic Chris Hartman called the book "masterful and elegantly written ... a cautionary tale for the ages".^[23]

ReviewingThe Last Pirate of New York in theWall Street Journal, Rinker Buck wrote, "'The Last Pirate of New York' is history-lite at its best, and readers will finish it with a satisfaction deeply relevant today."^[24]

ReviewingThe Adventures of Herbie Cohen, World's Greatest Negotiator in theWall Street Journal,Ed Kosner called the work, "[A] treat of a new book." Kosner continues, "Rich Cohen writes lovingly of his father’s 'love of bull―.' But the accumulated wit and wisdom of Herb Cohen scattered through the book reveals instead a keen grasp of human frailty and a gift for aphorism no less valid for its glibness," explaining, "it’s essentially the saga of a remarkable man who’s fond of saying 'The meaning of life . . . is more life' and knows what he’s talking about."

• 2009The Best American Essays of 2008
• 2002 Great Lakes Book Award from the American Booksellers Association forLake Effect.

• — (1999).Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons and Gangster Dreams. Vintage.ISBN 978-0-09-975791-7.OCLC 877546776.
• — (2001).The Avengers: A Jewish War Story. Vintage Books.ISBN 978-0-375-70529-8.OCLC 48155659.
• — (2003).Lake Effect. Vintage.ISBN 978-0-09-928705-6.OCLC 1181426522.
• — (2005).Machers and Rockers: Chess Records and the Business of Rock 'n' Roll. Profile.ISBN 978-1-86197-766-3.OCLC 58554237.
• — (2007).Sweet and Low: A Family Story. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.ISBN 978-0-312-42601-9.OCLC 105485940.
• — (2010).Israel is Real.ISBN 978-0-312-42976-8.OCLC 475447642.
• — (2013).The Fish that Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King.ISBN 978-1-250-03331-4.OCLC 809411728.
• — (2013).Alex and the Amazing Time Machine. Illustrated byKelly Murphy. Macmillan.ISBN 978-1-250-02729-0.OCLC 859394564.
• — (2014).Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football.ISBN 978-1-250-05604-7.OCLC 868276611.
• — (2017).The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones.ISBN 978-1-4722-1804-9.OCLC 1073032200.
• — (2018).The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse.ISBN 978-1-250-19278-3.OCLC 1062803393.
• — (2020).The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation.ISBN 978-0-399-58994-2.OCLC 1243500700.
• — (2022).Pee Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent. Picador.ISBN 978-1-250-82953-5.OCLC 1246141700.
• — (2022).The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator.ISBN 978-0-374-16961-9.OCLC 1264275629.

Ghostwritten

• —; Weintraub, Jerry (2011).When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man. Twelve.ISBN 978-0-446-54816-8.OCLC 1073614353.
• —;Sharapova, Maria (2020).Unstoppable: My Life So Far.ISBN 978-0-221-07048-8.OCLC 1157294486.

• Official website
• NPR's Weekend Edition,The Fish That Ate The Whale
• CBS News,The Fish That Ate The Whale
• Appearance onAll Things Considered
• Appearance on NPR'sThe Leonard Lopate Show 2006
• Appearance on NPR'sThe Leonard Lopate Show 2005
• On Hunter S. Thompson, inThe New York Times Book Review
• The Avengers Excerpt, Newsweek Magazine
• Random Houseauthor page

• Jewish American journalists
• Jewish American non-fiction writers
• American male journalists
• American male non-fiction writers
• Tulane University alumni
• 1968 births
• Living people
• American magazine journalists
• 21st-century American Jews

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• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from May 2016