One of the best chroniclers of New York, Joseph Mitchell, a transplanted North Carolinian wrote for The New Yorker from the late '30s through the early '60s. Mitchell specialized in people and institutions at the margins of society. Old Mr. Flood is about retired house wrecker Hugh G. Flood who plans to live to 115 years old on a diet of fresh seafood, harbor air and the occasional Scotch whiskey in famed New Yorker scribe Joseph Mitchell's fictional portrait of quintessential old-time New Yorker. Joseph Mitchell is the author of Apologies to the Iroquois, The Bottom of the Harbor, Joe Gould's Secret, McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, My Ears Are Bent, Old Mr. Flood, Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories.