Mishke.

Mishke.

Meshke Meshke Tom Genoa is currently a senior writer for ESPN.

He was previously a writer for Esquire and for GQ.

I know about him personally because of two specific pieces of work.

A feature I read that he did called The Falling Man,

about a man who fell from the World Trade Center Towers, one of the most acclaimed pieces of

journalism from the aftermath of 9-11. It's one that still stays with me, actually. And also,

I know about Tom through a piece he did on Fred Rogers

that was ultimately turned into It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the film featuring Tom Hanks.

I think the highest praise I've heard directed at Tom, you know, is by Esquire's John Hendrickson who profiled them,

and he put them on a list of the ten most important writers in Esquire's history, and that's

quite a long distinguished history. That includes people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and

Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe. So clearly there are magazine writers and then

there are magazine writers. And I think the list there tells you the esteem in which Tom's work

is held. But I'm having them on my program today for writing that is not magazine writing.

He has a book out and it's's a memoir, and much of his

experiences growing up, I can relate to at least in terms of the times. Sometimes when I'm

reading memoirs, I say to myself, I don't understand why this person thought their life was

all that interesting. In this particular case, I was glued to

everything I was reading start to finish. I wanted into this world, and it was quite a world to

spend some time with. The book has a 16-word title, and I cannot imagine shortening it. It's called

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