Brian Abrams is the author of "You Talkin' to Me?”: The Definitive Guide to Iconic Movie Quotes and four best-selling oral histories, tackling the subjects of Late Night with David Letterman, Gawker, Die Hard, and the Obama presidency.
His most recent book, "You Talkin' to Me?”, is an obsessive investigation into all the classic bits of Hollywood dialogue, from “Here’s looking at you, kid” and “I’ll have what she’s having” to “Always do the right thing” and “Nooooo! Wiiiiiire! HANGERRRRRRRS!” Upon its release, CNN’s resident Die Hard fanatic Jake Tapper discussed the book at length in a news segment that soared the title to the top of Amazon’s best-selling charts. Since, ”You Talkin’ to Me?” has received outsize industry attention and copies were given to every major 2024 Academy Award nominee via those extravagant Oscar swag bags.
Previously, Abrams wrote four best-selling oral histories for two separate divisions of Amazon Publishing. The first, AND NOW . . . An Oral History of Late Night With David Letterman, 1982–1993, chronicled the ironic revolution during the talk-show host's early period at NBC. The following year, Abrams wrote Gawker: An Oral History, which remains the quintessential account of the iconoclastic blog network. His third, Die Hard: An Oral History, told the inside story of the sleeper hit that has since been elevated to the status of an American classic.
Then, in 2018, the New York Times Book Review recognized Obama: An Oral History, 2009–2017 as the first of its kind, an oral history that spans an entire presidency. The colossal undertaking wouldn't have come together had it not been for cooperation from more than one hundred individuals composed of senior White House staff, cabinet secretaries and members of congress. “The veteran journalist offers an independent, unauthorized — though not quite unbiased — depiction,” wrote Entertainment Weekly.
Abrams was editor in chief of SpinMedia’s politics site Death and Taxes Magazine and before then served as BuzzFeed’s first-ever weekend editor. In 2015, upon publication of his first book, Party Like a President: True Tales of Inebriation, Lechery, and Mischief from the Oval Office, he was dubbed “the Ken Burns of presidential alcoholism.”
Abrams has written for the Washington Post Magazine, Time, Fangoria, High Times, and the Lowbrow Reader. He lives in New York City and spends far too much time on Letterboxd.