Author Reads Chapters Of Book "In The Hamptons"

If sometime this summer you see someone in the Hamptons talking on a microphone to a crowd of a dozen people somewhere, don't be surprised. From May 10 to Labor Day, author Dan Rattiner takes his book and microphone to one of 25 different locations in the Hamptons to give a short history lesson about each place followed by the reading of the appropriate chapter that took place there. Q&A period follows. The public is invited free of charge.

The book being read is a memoir entitled In the Hamptons: My Fifty Years With Farmers, Fishermen, Authors, Celebrities and Billionaires. It chronicles the author's encounters with the community as it came of age during the last half century to become a glittering summer resort for the wealthy. The author founded Dan's Papers in 1960 and has been the longtime Publisher and Editor.

The first public reading takes place on May 10 at 11 a.m. at BookHampton in East Hampton. The chapter he will read is "Speed King" about a restaurant owner on Newtown Lane, who, in 1968, witnessed the author, wearing a bathing suit and in handcuffs, being helped out a police car to cross the sidewalk into the front entrance of the EH Village Police Station. What happened next is part of a hilarious account of that time in the Hamptons.

The following day at 11 a.m., you will find the author down at the Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett, which was the exact location where Nazi saboteurs landed on American shores bent on sowing havoc during the Second World War. The chapter read does not chronicle that account but involves the making of the horror movie The Flesh Eaters at a nearby beach, where a mad Nazi scientist is making huge creatures that will help him take over the world. The author was on staff at the set, and so recounts some of those adventures, which ultimately resulted in the nationwide release of this film in 1967 at movie houses everywhere. It got very mixed reviews but is today a film cult classic.

For the full schedule, visit danrattiner.com and click on "tour dates." For interviews with the author, call Ansley Rosner at Random House at 212-782-9740

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