A Boy and His Dog in Hell

“I once described Mike Sager as “the Beat poet of American journalism.” The title is still apt. For decades, he has explored the beautiful and horrifying underbelly of American society with poignantly explicit portrayals of porn stars, swingers, druggies, movie stars, rockers, and rappers, as well as stunning stories about obscure people whose lives were resonant with deep meaning—a 92-year-old man, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, a 650-pound man. He became a journalistic ethnographer of American life and his generation’s heir to the work of Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson. His imposing body of work today is collected in more than a dozen books and eBooks.”
—Walt Harrington, author and past head of Journalism at the University of Illinois

To Purchase: A Boy and His Dog in Hell

Hunting Marlon Brando

At first it seemed like just another exotic assignment: “Go to Tahiti and find Marlon Brando.” But the worldwide search for the legendary actor, star of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and On the Waterfront, soon became a quest, and finally an obsession.

“You have to dare to be bad in this world of ours, you have to try stuff, you might have to fail. One thing is certain: If you do what you always do, it’s guaranteed to turn out the same.” 
–from Hunting Marlon Brando

To Purchase: Hunting Marlon Brando

Shaman

“Mike Sager is a consummate journalistic investigator and poetic chronicler of our world. Shaman is an epic study  of the history  of metaphysical and psychedelic thinking, personal obsession, the cult-impulse, and the mysterious life and times of Carlos Castenada himself.  It’s a rare trip across a key strand of counterculture history, and a deep look at an eternally enigmatic and impactful figure whose work continues to turn the wheel of our collective unconscious.” 
–John Schoenfelder, co-founder, NeoText

To Purchase: Shaman

Now Availalbe: Shaman: The Audiobook

Vetville

“Entertaining and fascinating. It draws the reader into these lives; at the end of the book, you will find yourself changed in some way… You will remember these men that you read about long after putting this book to rest.”    FIVE STARS.
–Military Writers Society of America*

* Awarded MWSA’s Founder’s Award

To Purchase: Vetville

The Lonely Hedonist

“For four decades, Mike Sager has been one of our finest practitioners of feature magazine writing, picking up where the New Journalism Gods—Wolfe, Talese, Thompson, et al—left off. This latest trove of Sager’s irresistible brand of social anthropology shows him in peak form, whether writing about celebrities, like J.J. Abrams and Peter Dinklage, or the usual gathering of bonafide American originals that find their way into his stories—a family-owned sex toys factory, a weed doctor, a clown, a man who started an exclusive sex club in Beverly Hills, and more.”
–Alex Belth, Editor, EsquireClassic.com

To Purchase: The Lonely Hedonist

Stoned Again

“In Stoned Again, Mike Sager refers to himself as a ‘drugs correspondent,’ but that’s legitimately humble smoke that belies what’s really going on here. While there’s plenty of weed, heroin, shrooms, and crack (not to mention plenty of Rick James, bitch) in these pages, what is most evident on every page is the remarkable reporting, empathy, craftsmanship, and storytelling that have rightly placed Mike Sager among the journalistic legends of our time.”
–Maximillian Potter, author, Shadows in the Vineyard

To Purchase:Stoned Again

The Devil and John Holmes—25th Anniversary Author’s Edition

“The Devil and John Holmes has everything you could want in a magazine story: Sex, drugs, murder. A fourteen-inch penis. It had to be great. There was no other way. But here’s the secret. For all the freebasing and the blood, the satin bikini briefs and decorative human skulls, the porn and the binges and the deathbed confessions, The Devil and John Holmes is a love story. At least it is in Sager’s hands.”
–Max Linsky, founding editor of Longform.org

To Purchase:The Devil and John Holmes

“In his audio commentary on the New Line DVD release of the classic movie Boogie Nights, P.T. Anderson cites as a major influence reporter Mike Sager’s article, ‘The Devil and John Holmes.’”
–Stephen Lemons, Salon.com

FOR MORE DETAILS, PLEASE SEE: www.TheSagerGroup.net

High Tolerance, A Novel

“The wry and knowing Mike Sager has written a saucy and kinetic L.A. novel. Celebrity gets fully toasted in this engaging romp about show business and the clash of cultures high and low, where the talk is tough before the shooting starts. The spotlight, it seems, can sometimes be a very dark place.”
–Ron Carlson, author, Return to Oakpine, co-director, MFA Program in Fiction Writing, University of California, Irvine.

To Purchase:High Tolerance, A Novel

“Pleasantly surprised to have found this great new author. His character development is masterly and his writing as smooth as silk. When a big-hitting rap star-gone-record producer ends up with three rappers dead in his office, questions surface. The story is fast-paced and fun but with writing as important as Tolstoy’s. You get swept away in the story to the point you don’t want it to end. Highly readable, highly entertaining HIGH TOLERANCE will win you over to Mike Sager books once and for all.”
–Susan Wingate, Dialogue: Between the Lines

Listen to an excerpt from HIGH TOLERANCE: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-audio-series-mike-sager.html

Listen to Sager’s LONGFORM PODCAST, interviewed by Max Linsky: http://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-mike-sager

“High Tolerance is Something You Develop Over Time.” 30 Rules of Tolerance gleaned from the novel, as featured on Esquire.com. https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/news/a26482/rules-of-tolerance-1213/

The Someone You’re Not

“Mike Sager writes with uncommon grace and, always, with respect for those who give him their time. His stories cut to the bone of our common humanity.”
–Paul Hendrickson, author of Seminary and Hemingway’s Boat

Featuring:  The extended version of the ASME-winning profile about Todd Marinovich that became ESPN’s Emmy-nominated documentary. Also: Paris Hilton, Bobby Jindal, Dana White, Ugly,  Big Balls Pete…and more. 

To Purchase: Someone You’re Not

Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists

EDITED BY WALT HARRINGTON & MIKE SAGER

NEXT WAVE collects the work of today’s finest young writers– nineteen creative reporters whose work builds upon foundations laid by previous generations, dating back more than fifty years to John Hersey, Lillian Ross, Gay Talese, and Tom Wolfe. Naysayers predicted the decline of long-form journalism with the rise of the Internet. But NEXT WAVE is evidence that literary journalism is alive and well, and that artful craftsmanship will never go out of fashion.  Each chapter includes a bio, personal essay, and an outstanding magazine or newspaper story from a different up-and-coming writer.

To Purchase:Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists

 Click book at right to access Table of Contents/Selectees.

 

Wounded Warriors

“This collection of pieces by Mike Sager is just brilliant– brave, written with soul and beauty, and unflinching in the depiction of a real America that needs to be revealed. Bravo to Sager for being one of the few writers left willing to do it.”
–Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights

To Purchase:Wounded Warriors

 

Revenge of the Donut Boys

“Like his journalistic precursors Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Sager writes frenetic, off-kilter pop-sociological profiles of Americans in all their vulgarity and vitality. He writes with flair, but only in the service of an omnivorous curiosity. He defies expectations in pieces that lesser writers would play for satire or sensationalism… a Whitmanesque ode to teeming humanity’s mystical unity.”
–The New York Times Book Review

To Purchase:Revenge of the Donut Boys

Scary Monsters and Super Freaks

“I can recognize the truth in these Sager stories– demoralizing tales about the darkest possible side of wretched humanity.”
–Hunter S. Thompson, author, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Now on Kindle: The eBook edition of Scary Monsters and Super Freaks, featuring the John Holmes story that inspired Boogie Nights and Wonderland. Also featuring : Janet Cooke, Rodney King, Rick James, Gary Condit, Rob Lowe, Eazy E, Veronica Guerin, and many more.

To Purchase:Scary Monsters and Super Freaks

Deviant Behavior, A Novel

“Sager studs his dark D.C. tale with sharp observations and an addictive neo-noir sensibility.”
– Publishers Weekly

To Purchase: Deviant Behavior, A Novel

Named a favorite novel with a journalist protagonist by the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
click here to see article: http://www.thesagergroup.net/?p=606

Tattoos & Tequila

The Vince Neil Story. To Hell and Back with One of Rock’s Most Notorious Frontmen.

“Tattoos & Tequila the book (there’s an album of the same name) is compelling, not only because it contains many disgustingly fascinating details of how teenage boys behave when they become rock stars, but also because of its subject’s willingness to appear, well, the way he is.”– New York Magazine

A New York Times Bestseller

“A revealing tell all…a riveting read” –The Today Show

“A chronicle of a lifetime spent in the bung hole of unbridled self-indulgence. It might be hot and tight in there, but the smell is not so good sometimes.”

To Purchase:Tattoos & Tequila