Rich Cohen was walking down State Street on a recent rainy morning and he was not alone, though he appeared to be. “I feel like I hear my father’s voice all the time as I am walking around, especially when I am back in Chicago,” he said.
Though he has long lived and written elsewhere, Cohen is arguably the most prolific and successful Chicago nonfiction writer of this era, his work deeply rooted in Glencoe, the place where he was born and raised.
He has written books about the Bears (“Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football”), Cubs (“The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse”) and Chess Records (“The Record Men: The Chess Brothers and the Birth of Rock & Roll”). He has also written books about the Rolling Stones (“The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones”); cowrote Jerry Weintraub’s biography (“When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man”); and written for magazines, television and more books.
In almost all of these, his past and members of his family appear, in mostly minor roles but providing emotional heft. One recent book focused on him and his 11-year-old son Micah and their adventures in youth hockey (“Pee Wees: Confession of a Hockey Parent”).
I wrote of that book, “The little boy is a refreshing delight throughout, having fun while the father operates on another level” and “It may focus on Cohen and Micah, but there is a universality to it that will surely score with parents who don’t know a hockey puck from a birdie putt.”
He tells me his first book, 1999’s “Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams,” was inspired by stories he heard from his father, who is the subject of his newest book. “The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World’s Greatest Negotiator” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a wildly entertaining story of a man with boundless energy and philosophical pizazz.
On a quick visit to Chicago recently to promote his work with some radio interviews and a book store appearance, Rich sat down for breakfast one morning and said, “Every book I have written has its seeds in my father and the stories he was always telling about himself and his friends and the people he knew. It was like being part of a Jewish ‘Fat Albert’ show.”
After Glencoe and graduating from New Trier High School, Rich attended Tulane University in New Orleans. He was on course for a career in law but got derailed by a stint as a messenger at The New Yorker. He got a couple of short pieces published in its pages and was thus hooked.
His is a vastly different life/career path than that of his dad who, even as a youth in the 1930s and 1940s, began to show a facility for resolving conflicts and getting out of trouble, often of his own making. Born and bred in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, Herbie Cohen was a member of a “gang” (more like a social club) called the Warriors. Also members were boys with colorful nicknames such as Bucko, Who Ha and Sheepo. One of his great pals was Sandy Koufax, the future Hall of Fame baseball pitcher. Another, called Zeek the Greek, was lifelong friend Larry Ziegler, who would become that wildly successful radio and TV yapper named Larry King.
In the book we follow Herbie into the U.S. Army; eavesdrop on his charming courtship of Ellen, wife and mother of their three children; watch him move his family to the Chicago area; and go to work for Sears before going out on his own as a corporate and government negotiator and strategy consultant. He was called “The World’s Best Negotiator” by Playboy Magazine and lauded by Time. He worked with the Carter administration during the Iran hostage crisis.
His skills and personality were a winning combination. He was ever in demand, flying across the country to speak and resolve conflicts. Chicago playwright David Mamet asked him for advice for a seminal scene in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in1984.
Maybe Mamet had read Herbie’s book, published a few years earlier. A lot of people had.
“Once he decided to write a book based on his career, it was almost like he was torturing himself,” said Rich. “He took to the leaky basement and wrote and wrote, longhand on yellow legal pads. I almost forgot he was alive until I heard him scream, ‘Coffee, more coffee.'”
After eight months, he was finished. His wife typed the manuscript, which began with this sentence, “Your real world is a giant negotiating table, and like it or not, you’re a participant.”
It was a struggle to find a publisher, but once he did, the book, “You Can Negotiate Anything,” became a huge bestseller. It sold many millions of copies. The book is still in print, as is a sequel of sorts “Negotiate This!”
This all makes for a splendidly lively narrative in “The Adventures of Herbie Cohen” but the book is not without its dark sides, including some dysfunctional relatives (“My mother’s older sister didn’t come out of her bedroom for 40 years,” Rich writes); his father’s love affair and the death of Ellen Cohen nearly a decade ago … The book is dedicated to her.
“I have always believed, maybe it was something my father said, that, ‘You have to write the truth or you shouldn’t write at all,'” says Rich. “He did want me to be a lawyer, telling me long ago that writing is the dumbest career he could imagine.'”
Rich lives in Connecticut with his wife, Jessica, a lawyer. They have four boys. Herbie currently lives in Brooklyn, in an apartment near his son Steve, a lawyer, and his family. The third of his children, Sharon, is also an attorney.
Herbie is 89 and has a few heart problems, but Rich says he is lively and sharp. Father and son talk four or five times a week, but Rich did not let his father read this book until it was finished, even while admitting that Herbie had been “a shadow editor of my work, back to grade school.”
And so?
“Well, he’s happy with 90% of it,” said Rich. “Maybe 95%.”
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
