Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life author talk and book signing with Paul Grondahl

Free with museum admission. Books available for purchase and signing.

"Paul Grondahl has given us the biography that Andy deserves." — Steve Kroft

A hilarious and heartbreaking biography of one of America's most popular commentators and beloved curmudgeons, whose biting wit and homespun humor earned him comparisons to Mark Twain and  Will Rogers.​​​

About the book

​Andy Rooney carries readers through the arc of a true American original and one of the country's most popular television and newspaper commentators. Award-winning journalist and biographer Paul Grondahl's comprehensive biography traces Rooney's early transformation from smart-aleck prankster to World War II correspondent for Stars and Stripes, whose first-person wartime dispatches rivaled the reportage of Ernie Pyle, Edward R. Murrow, and Walter Cronkite. After narrowly avoiding death in the war, Rooney's early success as author and Hollywood screenwriter turned to years of rejection as a freelancer, with unfulfilled literary aspirations and financial struggles.

Eventually, he found his niche as a gag writer with Arthur Godfrey, as an essayist for Harry Reasoner's CBS News specials and, in a stroke of luck, as writer and deliverer of the wildly popular 60 Minutes segment "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney."

The book draws on interviews with Rooney and his family members, childhood friends, and 60 Minutes colleagues, as well as archival research and abundant quotations of Rooney's own words through unpublished writings, personal letters, and pieces beloved by his legion of fans.

Along the way, Grondahl uncovers new truths about Rooney’s long-term extramarital affair, the extent of his academic failure, and how his boorish behavior alienated him from close friends. This dark side of Rooney's personality, however, is balanced by examples of deep loyalty, acts of kindness, and encouragement of young journalists.

Here is the extraordinary life story of a man who contained multitudes.

Read an excerpt here.

 

About the Author

Paul Grondahl is the Opalka Endowed Director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany. It is the nation's premier literary series and brings dozens of acclaimed authors to Albany each year for lectures, discussions and readings.

His previous books include Mayor Corning: Albany Icon, Albany Enigma, also published by SUNY Press, and I Rose Like a Rocket: The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt.

As a staff writer at the Albany Times Union from 1984 to 2017, he won numerous local, state, and national writing prizes, and his reporting took him from the Arctic to Antarctica; from Northern Ireland to Africa; from New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina and Haiti after its catastrophic earthquake in 2010; and across New York State, from Ground Zero on 9/11 to the Adirondack wilderness.

His in-depth newspaper projects on domestic violence, death and dying, mental illness in state prisons and the problems facing sub-Saharan Africa have won a number of local, state and national journalism awards.

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