Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe (born 1976) is an American investigative reporter and the author of 5 books. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

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Quotes

Jefferson had served as America's minister to France between 1785 and the outbreak of the French Revolution and had developed a fascination with French wine. Upon his return to America, he continued to order large quantities of Bordeaux for himself and for George Washington and stipulated in one 1790 letter that there respective shipments should be marked with their initials. During his firs term as president, Jefferson spent $7,500—roughly $120,000 in today's currency—on wine, and he is generally regarded as America's first great wine connoisseur. (He might also have been America's first great wine bore. "There was, as usual, a dissertation upon wines," John Quincy Adams noted in his diary after dining with Jefferson in 1807. "Not every edifying.")
- "The Jefferson Bottles: How could one collector find so much rare fine wine? (2007)". Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2022. ISBN 9780385548526. (essay 1st published in the The New Yorker)

Not long after Amy Bishop shot her colleagues in Huntsville, authorities in Massachusetts released decades-old documents about the death of her brother. The original police reports—several dozen yellowed pages, some covered in handwritten jottings, some of them typed—contain revelations that call into question the 1987 state-police report that declared the killing an accident.
- (February 3, 2013) "A Loaded Gun". The New Yorker.

In July, 2008, Rio Tinto was stripped of its license. Guinean officials then granted exploration permits for half of the deposit to a much smaller company: Beny Steinmetz Group Resources, or B.S.G.R. Ben Steinmetz is, by some estimates, the richest man in Israel; according to Bloomberg, his personal fortune amounts to some nine billion dollars. Steinmetz, who made his name in the diamond trade, hardly ever speaks to the press, and the corporate structures of his various enterprises are so convoluted that it is difficult to assess the extent of his holdings. The Simandou contract was a surprising addition to Steinmetz’s portfolio, because B.S.G.R. had no experience exporting iron ore. A mining executive in Guinea told me, “Diamonds you can carry away from the mine in your pocket. With iron ore, you need infrastructure that can last decades.”
- (July 1, 2013) "Buried Secrets". The New Yorker.

One chilly morning last week, at a Pret a Manger on the edge of Union Square, the Roca brothers came in from the cold. They were visiting New York on a twenty-four-hour furlough from El Celler de Can Roca, their dining establishment in northeast Spain, which, according to a list issued annually by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants..., is currently the best on the planet. Joan (head chef), Josep (sommelier), and Jordi (desserts) were dressed in dark parkas that did not look quite up to the weather. The plan had been to visit the Greenmarket across the street, but they were hesitating. “It’s cold in Spain this time of year,” Jordi said, nibbling nonjudgmentally on a Pret croissant. “But not like this.”
- (January 24, 2016) "Snackish". The New Yorker.

Is there a way to translate the complexity into a narrative that has a kind of hook that will grab people?
- (April 3, 2024) "Patrick Radden Keefe, "Empire of Pain"". After Words, CSPAN, YouTube. (quote at 3:40 of 55:18; interview by Beth Macy)

I don’t have any particular system for finding stories. I try to read as widely as possible, and often find ideas in the margins of other things. If there’s a paragraph or two in a newspaper article or a chapter of a book that I find particularly intriguing, I’ll see what else I can learn. I also try to spend as much time as possible offline, out in the real world, talking to people. The book I’m finishing right now grew out of a casual conversation I had two summers ago with a total stranger. We just started chatting and he told me a story.
- Louis R.C. Brickell. Inside the Locked Room.