An iconic book about American youth and friendship between young men. Everyone has had a friendship like the one Rich Cohen immortalizes in Lake Effect : a friendship that defined you at a critical time, that gave you courage, that transported you from adolescence into the beginnings of adulthood. With hilarity and disarming tenderness, Cohen chronicles a golden moment and the bittersweet legacy it left behind. Cohen grew up on the North Shore of Chicago, in Glencoe, Illinois, “the perfect town for a certain kind of dreamy kid, with just enough history to get your arms around.” In the summer, he and his friends slept on the beach: Tom Pistone, who drove a ’61 Pontiac GTO, walked with a swagger, and dated girls in polka dots; Ronnie Flowers, gullible and earnest, always the butt of someone’s joke; and Jamie Drew. Jamie had moved to Glencoe from a working-class town west of the city, and he had been raised without a father. Cohen was from the affluent part of town known as the Bluffs; his own father was the dominant figure in his life. The two boys became inseparable. Jamie “was what, for years, looking in a mirror, I had hoped to see looking back at me.” Lake Effect is about growing up on the Great Lakes, emerging from the shadow of a father, falling under the spell of an unforgettable friendship, and the pain of looking back on that friendship with adult eyes. What happens to the self of childhood? Can a person vanish so cleanly into adult life? In a memoir that stretches from the shores of Lake Michigan to the streets of the French Quarter to the hallowed halls of the old New Yorker , Rich Cohen captures the humble dreams—of kissing girls, getting drunk for the first time, driving to a jazz club in “the city” in a borrowed car, seeing the Cubs finally win from the cheap seats at Wrigley Field on a summer day—that fueled an epic bond between two young men. Writing at the height of his powers, with impeccable comic timing and a gift for the perfect anecdote, the indelible turn of phrase, Rich Cohen captures the grandeur and sorrow and sweetness of youth. Cohen, the author of The Avengers (2000) and Tough Jews (1998), chooses a lighter subject for his third book: his own youth in the suburbs of Chicago. At the heart of this memoir is Cohen's friendship with Jamie Drew, a charismatic boy who befriends Cohen in high school and takes him beyond the affluent suburbs they reside in. Together, the pair and their friends traverse a world of parties, girls, and downtown bars. Cohen admires and even idolizes Jamie's easy charm and ability to not just blend in a crowd but to take it over. Jamie also slips easily into Cohen's family, spending more time at Rick's house than he does at his own. College divides the boys; Cohen heads to New Orleans to attend Tulane, while Jaime ends up at the University of Kansas after a summer of hitchhiking cross-country. They see each other only sporadically, but their friendship remains strong, despite the distance and circumstances that separate them. With graceful writing and insightful observations, Cohen does justice to the friendship that shaped his youth. Kristine Huntley Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "He got me on the second page, and the blows didn't stop coming. This man is a storyteller of the first order, and I'm freaked out that we went to high school together and I didn't know him." --Liz Phair An iconic book about American youth and friendship between young men. Everyone has had a friendship like the one Rich Cohen immortalizes in Lake Effect : a friendship that defined you at a critical time, that gave you courage, that transported you from adolescence into the beginnings of adulthood. With hilarity and disarming tenderness, Cohen chronicles a golden moment and the bittersweet legacy it left behind. Cohen grew up on the North Shore of Chicago, in Glencoe, Illinois, “the perfect town for a certain kind of dreamy kid, with just enough history to get your arms around.” In the summer, he and his friends slept on the beach: Tom Pistone, who drove a ’61 Pontiac GTO, walked with a swagger, and dated girls in polka dots; Ronnie Flowers, gullible and earnest, always the butt of someone’s joke; and Jamie Drew. Jamie had moved to Glencoe from a working-class town west of the city, and he had been raised without a father. Cohen was from the affluent part of town known as the Bluffs; his own father was the dominant figure in his life. The two boys became inseparable. Jamie “was what, for years, looking in a mirror, I had hoped to see looking back at me.” Lake Effect is about growing up on the Great Lakes, emerging from the shadow of a father, falling under the spell of an unforgettable friendship, and the pain of looking back on that friendship with adult eyes. What happens to the self of childhood? Can a person vanish so cleanly into adult life? In a memoir that stretches from the shores of Lake Michigan to the streets of the French Q