This just in, Tom Rachman has given readers an exceptional set of stories about the birth and death of a newspaper, populated these tales with engaging characters and done so with great style and feeling.

The core here is a Rome-based English-language international newspaper. Rachman follows it from its inception in the 1950s to its 21st century demise. The story of this paper is the story of the people it touches, from founder to Obits editor, from editor in chief to Cairo stringer. There are 11 stories here, each with newspaper headlines for titles, and between each is another piece in the historical tale of the paper, so make it an even dozen in all. Rachman’s characters feel familiar and real, maybe a bit too real. I found that I was able to identify more than a couple of real people from my life who corresponded to the characters in his stories. And it is always a bit alarming to see parts of oneself in characters written by a complete stranger. Most of the characters are faced with personal and/or professional crises they must endure to be able to move on with their lives, or to understand their lives better, and that tell us something key about them. Loneliness figures prominently.

As a foreign correspondent and editor at the International Herald Tribune, Rachman clearly knows of what he speaks re the details of the paper portrayed here. Perhaps the central character here is the paper. We get to see how it was conceived, some of the struggles it endured over its lifetime, and what forces ultimately cause its demise. Like any good reporter Rachman has given us the information we need, the who, what, where, when and why, but he has enriched the telling with an emotional content, showing us the stories behind the people behind the stories. Read all about it.