"American Gangster" and Mark Jacobson

I'm looking forward to seeing the new Denzel Washington/Russell Crowe movie American Gangster. It's not simply because I think Washington is one of the best actors of his generation (who is featured, along with Crowe, in a recent cover story on Entertainment Weekly), no, it's because of the reportage of one Mark Jacobson.

Jacobson? Who is that? One of the best journalists of his generation, that's who. Honestly, I've just discovered his writings myself, with his marvelous collection of essays and reportage Teenage Hipster in the Modern World: From the Birth of Punk to the Land of Bush: Thirty Years of Apocalyptic Journalism. He's a regular contributor to New York Magazine and, in fact, that's where the American Gangster movie has its roots. It is Jacobson's piece on Frank Lucas, once the city's "biggest, baddest heroin kingpins," that the movie has built itself around.

To read more of Jacobson's work online, he's got an archive on the NY Magazine site.