While this volume still has the phenomenal writing style of PRK, these stories have a rather tenuous connection (to one another and to the title). The Anthony Bourdain story in particular seemed to have little to do with the idea and more to do with PRK's clear admiration for Bourdain. Does seem like a bit of a cash grab type of book but it was still worth a read.

Not the author's best work — and how could it be! his talent! — but it was a nice snack of fun/wild/shocking stories to read. I recommend putting on the audiobook while you're on a road trip.

Keefe is hands down one of the best writers of narrative non-fiction. As with his other books, this one is even more riveting than even the best novel. I could not put it down and eagerly looked forward to time to being introduced to more rogues when I could make time to read. He has had a strong of phenomenal books (and podcasts) and I cannot wait for what he writes next. Great stuff!

A great collection of Patrick Radden Keefe's essays that any fan of his would enjoy. The wine story is a favorite! Each essay unravels with ease and eye-catching details.

What I loved about this the most was the wide variety of stories and the wide variety of people profiled.. Never did I think I'd read an essay about Anthony Bourdain and also an essay about a woman on the run from her mob brother in the Netherlands. Some of the topics were a bit of a slog, I appreciated the research and dedication to all of them, but definitely some of them I was skimming because I just wasn't interested.

Another fantastic book by Patrick Radden Keefe. His meticulous research and excellent writing bring these stories to life. The non-fiction reads like fiction, driving you to never want to put it down.

Consistently strong and consumable reporting woven into narratives that make you forget you're not reading fiction. I'm ready to go back and read this author's earlier work now.

So glad this collection of PRK’s New Yorker pieces were compiled, as I’m terrible at reading any of the long form pieces I save in my tabs, on Pocket, or the graveyard… I mean, articles collection on my Kindle. I loved this, even though many of them upset me terribly (The Avenger, A Loaded Gun - that update to the article just so crushing, The Worst of the Worst, the now-devastating profile of Anthony Bourdain). As much as I was into this, I’m ready for some fiction as it was a bit of a rough companion during our nomadic adventures during the week without AC.

I love non-fiction, but this book took me months to get through. There were some extremely strong stories that were so interesting, but then there were some that dragged and seemed quite dated. One of my favorite ones was about counterfeit wine — so good.

Rogues brings together a dozen of Patrick Radden Keefe’s most celebrated articles from The New Yorker on the many ways people behave badly. As Keefe says in his preface, "They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial."

Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death penalty attorney who represents the "worst of the worst," among other bravura works of literary journalism.

I am a huge Patrick Radden Keefe fan- his book Empire of Pain is both chilling and fascinating and I read this fabulous collection of pieces from The New Yorker in one sitting. I would finish one and then say oh I’ll just read one more until I reached the end of the book. Not only does Keefe write about fascinating people who engage in all sorts of illicit activities but he manages but to make each story such a page turner. It is a book that you can easily pick up and put down because each story is distinct. I learned a ton about so many fascinating topics including how Mark Burnett is responsible for Trump’s rise to power, how the brother of a victim of the Lockerbie bombing appears to have solved the case, and how significant numbers of collectible wines are fakes. I truly could not put the book down.

Patrick Radden Keefe's writing is excellent, as always. It was interesting to see this collection of pieces together and I really enjoyed getting the updates at the end of each. Readers of the New Yorker will enjoy.

I loved empire of pain so was excited to read this book by the same author. In a series of essays/chapters we hear about various criminals and grifters. Some of these were more interesting to me than others. The chapter on Trump didn’t nec tell me anything new but does help put his rise in to context. If you like non fiction a la Malcolm gladwell this is an interesting one to pick up.

I enjoyed the essays in this book, I hadn't read them before. There are small updates at the end of each essay of where the subjects are now (2020-2022) and it was interesting to read the original piece and then see the update. I did put off the final essay as it was about Anthony Bourdain and I thought it would be depressing. It wasn't but also the update at the end is sad. A great collection to read over several months!

This book was really interesting and I liked all the different stories within. I couldn't read it all in one sitting as the stories were dense, so I tried to take it a story at a time. My favorite was probably the one with the Heineken kidnapping and the sister that had to stay in hiding from her crime lord brother. Overall, super interesting book.

Each one of the chapters in this book could be the basis for a novel. However, these are all true stories of white collar criminals. The adage that truth is stranger than fiction is the main premise here. Previously published as essays in the New Yorker, Keefe has gathered them together to make a collection of amoral but fascinating tales. As he has shown before Keefe is a brilliant writer, thorough in his research and engaging in his narrative.

Rogues is a great collection of essays by the amazingly talented Patrick Radden Keefe. I wanted to know more after each and every chapter.

Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain, is great at long form journalism. This book is a collection of some of his previously published works.

I really enjoyed some of these pieces. I loved A Loaded Gun about a female workplace shooter, Crime Family about a Dutch gangster and his informant sister, Winning about Mark Burnett who produced The Apprentice staring Donald Trump as a successful everyman, making him a celebrity that half the country later elected President, The Worst of the Worst about death penalty public defender Judy Clarke, and Journeyman about Anthony Bourdain. The other stories I found much less compelling and just place fillers. I did switch from print to audio on this one and found the audio version to be much easier and more enjoyable.

If you think rebellious or villainous people are interesting, you will like this one. If you like antiheros on tv in shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, or Mad Men, this would be for you. Or if you haven't taken the plunge into the long Empire of Pain, you might try some of these stories first to see if Patrick Radden Keefe's writing style interests you.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy for review.

I am one of the five people on earth who could not get into Say Nothing (which I think had more to do with my struggle to absorb nonfiction than anything else) so I wanted to try Rogues to see if article-length nonfiction would work better for me. Fortunately, it did! I won't pretend that some weren't easier than others (that Swiss banking one, oof) but they were all enjoyable and interesting. I can definitely see why people are drawn to Radden Keefe's writing style: it reads very smoothly and he does a great job establishing the people he writes about. The standout to me was the Bourdain article, but honestly I don't think there's a bad one in the bunch here.

I would definitely recommend this, especially to those hesitant about nonfiction.

Patrick Radden Keefe is a much celebrated journalist with a list of honors and awards as long as your arm. He first drew my notice in 2019 with Say Nothing, his searing, meticulously researched book on The Troubles, that period of guerilla warfare in the North of Ireland, as its people tried (yet again) to break free of British imperial rule. That book rattled me to my core, and when I received a review copy for this book, I understood that there couldn’t possibly be another book as deeply affecting as his last. And I was right; it isn’t. It is, however, interesting in most places, and Keefe can write like nobody’s business. This book is for sale now; my thanks go to Net Galley and Doubleday for the galley.

Each chapter of this book is on a different topic; ostensibly, each is about a different rogue, or group of rogues, or—in one case—a whole family of rogues! However, there are a couple of chapters where that isn’t really true, and that is my strongest quibble with anything presented there. Most, however, are unquestionably about scoundrels. The first, about an obscenely wealthy wine snob who finds himself with some counterfeit wine, makes my blood boil. A private plane, burning enough fuel to melt the polar caps, or to transport a good many people to work for an entire year, is dispatched to fetch some wine. This one makes me cranky enough, and is lengthy enough, that I abandon it halfway in. The next, “Crime Family,” is a riveting expose of a notorious, yet strangely beloved Scandinavian kidnapper whose sister turns him in when she senses that he’s spiraling out of control. She owns five armored cars, because she knows her brother will never rest until one of them is dead. Chilling, indeed! Other favorites are about El Chapo, and about Mark Burnett, the promoter that turned Trump into The Apprentice, splicing and editing sufficiently to make the man sound coherent and businesslike. There is one about the Lockerbie bombing, and another about insider trading, that I tried to care about but couldn’t, so I skipped those. And there’s one about Jeffrey Epstein, too.
All told, this book is a meal. Even if you do as I did, and skip those that don’t spark your interest, this is a well written, worthwhile collection.
Recommended to those that enjoy well crafted journalism.

While I have both Patrick Radden Keefe's previous two books - Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, I have yet to read either. I keep meaning to but have not gotten to them yet. I know he is a highly acclaimed journalist and author, so I jumped at the chance to request a galley of Rogues.

Rogues is a selection of Radden Keefe's most celebrated articles published in The New Yorker. All stories included in this book are about people - grifters, killers, rebels, and crooks. I presume that the articles contained in this book can all be found in their entirety on The New Yorker's website, minus the two to three sentence update at the end of each story/chapter. My question is, if you have a New Yorker subscription, can you basically read this book without buying it? Someone please confirm.

Although I have read my fair share of longform journalism, it is not a medium I frequently consume. For me, each story within Rogues screamed that they were pieces of journalism - dry and lacking description. Keep in mind that the intended audience of this book is essentially The New Yorker subscribers and make obvious deductions from there. This translated to each story taking an obnoxious amount of time to read/dredge through. I can typically read a book of this length in half the time it took me to read Rogues.

I found that the purposes of the stories were largely lost. Was each chapter supposed to simply be a portrait of an individual? They did not seem to say anything specific about the world or have a clear conclusion. I acknowledge that not everyone needs there to be a reason behind narrative nonfiction, but I finished feeling that Rogues really was rutterless. Did I learn something? Sure but I did I take anything away other than some likely useless information? No.

My favorite chapter/story was "Winning" that discussed how television producer Mark Burnett (Survivor, The Apprentice, etc.) resurrected Donald Trump as an icon. My conclusion: fuck you, Mark Burnett; media is inherently political. If you're interested, I am happy to recommend others.

I do not want to review to seem like I hated Rogues, because I did not. I enjoyed many of the chapters, as I am apt to enjoy learning new things. I simply felt like that spark that makes a good book a great one was missing. And I never felt emotionally invested in any of the stories. In addition, the contents were largely uneven in compellingness.

Overall, I enjoyed Rogues but would recommend some chapters over others. The verdict is still out on if it is worth buying when you can possibly access all of its contents, minus the prologue online.