People don't buy memoirs to read about happy families. And yet, for those who read a lot of memoirs, it can still be startling to learn both how many people have unhappy families--and how quickly we become inured to those people's pain. It's a rare writer who recollects his trials with clarity and dispassion, giving us not voyeurism but a good look at ourselves. Moehringer, raised poor by his melancholy mother, found himself looking for male role models wherever he could find them--often among the regulars at Publicans, a Manhasset, Long Island, bar that sounds a bit like Cheers with swearing. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, he recalls events as disparate as losing his virginity and getting his first newspaper job (at the New York Times0 ) with a newsman's imperative to get the story. The reconstructed dialogue can be a bit cinematic, but that's a quibble. Funny, honest, and insightful, The Tender Bar0 finds universal themes in an unusual upbringing and declares a real love of barroom life without romanticizing it too much. --Keir Graff Copyright 2005 Booklist

It takes a gin mill to raise a child--or so one might think from this memoir filled with gladness by a Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times correspondent. In the early '70s, grade-schooler Moehringer lived with his mother in her father's house in Manhasset, a small town 17 miles east of Manhattan that F. Scott Fitzgerald used as the setting for The Great Gatsby. Listening to the radio for his absent father (a drunken deejay), puzzled by his slovenly grandfather, the boy had no male role models until Uncle Charlie took him to the local saloon where he bartended. Moehringer evokes the sights, sounds and smells that gave Publicans (originally known as Dickens) its sodden charm: not just the beer and the fund of coins accumulating in the urinal, but the "faint notes of perfumes and colognes, hair tonics and shoe creams, lemons and steaks and cigars and newspapers, and an undertone of brine from Manhasset Bay." Sporting Runyonesque nicknames like Bob the Cop, Cager, Stinky, Colt, Smelly, Jimbo, Fast Eddy and Bobo, the bar's denizens included poets, bookies, Vietnam vets, lawyers, actors, athletes, misfits and dreamers, all forming "one enormous male eye looking over my shoulder." Moehringer captures in all its raunchy, often hilarious glory the conversations of these master storytellers, as intoxicated by words as by alcohol. Their saloon community later provided a retreat for the author following a disastrous collegiate love affair and failure as a New York Times copyboy. The 1989 death of charismatic owner Steve began Publicans' demise, but also propelled 25-year-old Moehringer into growing up, as he left his buddies behind and began his journalism career anew out West. A straight-up account of masculinity, maturity and memory that leaves a smile on the face and an ache in the heart. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Moehringer capably reads his own memoir, which takes him from a peripatetic Long Island childhood to life as a budding journalist at the New York Times. Torn between the feminine comfort of his mother and the masculine camaraderie he finds in a series of bars and taverns, Moehringer details his difficult but loving upbringing. Having lived the experiences of his book, Moehringer brings to life colorful characters, like his stuttering grandfather. His soft, deep voice complements the warmly rendered history that celebrates the oddly composed parts of his childhood, and how time spent in a series of bars carousing with father figures formed him. The uniform tone of the audiobook is hampered by the jazz noodling that appears at the beginning of each track, which interrupts the book's passage through time. Still, listening to Moehringer's soothing voice is like basking in the glow of a barroom storyteller-not the one who shouts to be heard over the din, but the one whose story is good enough to make everyone keep it down. Simultaneous release with the Hyperion hardcover (Reviews, June 27). (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize winner, Yale graduate, Harvard fellow, and national reporter for the Los Angeles Times, grew up in a bar. Specifically, Publicans, a Manhasset, Long Island, NY, bar. Abandoned by his radio host father and raised by a strong but luckless mother, he looked to the neighborhood bar for male role models. There he was taught such disparate lessons as how to throw a ball, how to bet on horses, and how to analyze a poem. His teachers were a hilarious, flawed, and diverse lot-Wall Street financiers, actors, poets, cops, bookies-and Moehringer's knack for characterization brings every one of them to life. At Publicans, the author found a home, the masculinity he yearned to assume, and eventually, the strength to leave. Just like at Cheers, everybody knew your name at Publicans. They also knew your cousin's name, your grade point average, and the best Frank Sinatra song to mend a broken heart. Highly recommended for all collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/05.]-Jan Brue Enright, Augustana Coll. Lib., Sioux Falls, SD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.