Word: raconteur
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...American aristocrat-public servant, who worked for six Presidents as diplomat, adviser and troubleshooter; of a heart attack; in Washington, D.C. The tall, courtly son of a Maryland Senator and Pulitzer-prizewinning author, Bruce had a Jeffersonian career-farmer, lawyer, author, state legislator, businessman, Army colonel, sportsman, art patron, raconteur and wine connoisseur. After running the European operations of the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) during World War II, Bruce helped rebuild the Continent as an administrator of the Marshall Plan and later as Ambassador to France under Harry Truman. A strong advocate of a united Europe...
...light-heavyweight champion of the world, Archie Moore. The incident forms the first part of Plimpton's newest book, a meander through various and sundry settings which Plimpton manages to connect to boxing, sometimes by the thinnest of threads. In Shadow Box Plimpton displays the hallmark of the true raconteur: he rambles constantly but never bores...
True Confessions, John Gregory Dunne's first novel, is Tom Spellacy's unrepentant recollections of his life as a tarnished blue knight. He proves to be a gifted, foulmouthed raconteur who can charm the reader down to a plane where cynicism and sentimentality are indistinguishable and the difference between social history and gossip is irrelevant. His "book" on Lois Fazenda, a would-be starlet whose naked body was found neatly cut in two at the torso: "She lived in a series of boarding houses much like the one on North Cherokee. On West Adams Boulevard she thought...
With one house, a crumbling blacksmith shop, a dance hall and a combination post office-saloon, Luckenbach belongs on an MGM back lot. Its rise began in 1970 when a slow-talking rancher and raconteur named Hondo Crouch bought up half the town, supposedly because of his unhappiness with the saloon's irregular hours. Soon the place was a laid-back, beer-stocked afternoon retreat for country musicians. Among them: Jerry Jeff Walker, who brought old pals like Willie Nelson by for a visit and in 1973 recorded his Viva Terlingua album there...
...latest social history, Stephen Birmingham does for the black rich what he did for the Irish rich in Real Lace, the Jewish rich in Our Crowd, and the Wasp rich in The Right People. With a raconteur's ear for a good anecdote and an interior decorator's eye for a well-placed objet d'art, he classifies the values of the wealthy blacks, their habits, schools, clubs, skin tones, accents, charities and floor plans...