Neil Strauss is the six-time New York Times best-selling author of The Dirt with Mötley Crüe, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star with Jenna Jameson, and The Long Hard Road Out of Hell with Marilyn Manson.
His books, The Game and Rules Of The Game, for which he went undercover in a secret society of pickup artists for two years, made him an international celebrity and an accidental hero to young men around the world. The Game is currently in production as a feature film through Lions Gate, with Rawson Thurber (Dodgeball) directing.
His newest book Emergency (HarperCollins), which Rolling Stone described as "an escape plan" for a "world in crisis," spent three months on the New York Times bestseller list and cemented Strauss's reputation as, in the words of Maxim magazine, "a George Plimpton for the 21st century." While going undercover for his books, Strauss has been named everything from the best pickup artist in the world (by Associated Press during The Game) to receiving the Presidents Volunteer Service Award (for his search-and-rescue work during Emergency).”
In addition to his books, Strauss was a cultural critic and reporter at The New York Times for ten years, where he wrote thousands of articles in addition to his ground-breaking Pop Life column. He is currently a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where he has written cover stories on Tom Cruise, Orlando Bloom, Kurt Cobain, the Strokes, Christina Aguilera, Jewel, Lenny Kravitz, the Wu-Tang Clan, and others.
His quartet of rock books - the fourth was Don't Try This at Home, in which he lived with Dave Navarro and a photobooth for a year - have made him one the most acclaimed rock biographers of his generation. The Dirt was hailed by Q magazine as "the most unputdownable rock book of the year, or possibly any year," while Publishers Weekly cited The Long Hard Road Out of Hell as "possibly the highest-selling rock biography of all time."
Strauss has received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music journalism for his coverage of Kurt Cobain's suicide for Rolling Stone and for his exclusive profile of Eric Clapton for the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times. His front-page stories for the Times on Wal-Mart's CD-editing policies, music censorship, radio payola, and the lost wax figures of country-music stars have earned him distinction as an investigative reporter as well as a critic. For perhaps his best-known cover story for Arts and Leisure, he changed his name and tried to make it as a stand-up comic; the result was bookings at some of the biggest comedy clubs in New York. He has also written about film, dating, travel, sports, and politics for the Times.
Strauss has also contributed to Esquire, Maxim, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Details, The Source, New York Newsday, and many other magazines and newspapers. He began his career on the staff of Village Voice while still a college undergraduate. In 1990, also while in college, he edited the book Radiotext(e) for the publisher Semiotext(e). Since then, his work has appeared in over thirty books, including several other bestsellers.
Beyond writing, Strauss is a regular on television. He has acted in everything from Curb Your Enthusiasm to the Beck video Sexx Laws. And he has appeared on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, The View, The Carson Daly Show, The Tom Green Show, and dozens of other talk shows.
Neil Strauss is currently based in Los Angeles, where he lives with his goat, Lola, and volunteers as part of a search-and-rescue team that works with the Devonshire police department.
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