He believed that all people existed behind varying layers of armor which, like the archaeological layers of earth itself, reflected the historical events and turbulence of a lifetime. An individual’s armor that had been developed to resist pain and rejection might also block a capacity for pleasure and achievement, and feelings too deeply trapped might be released only by acts of self-destruction or harm to others. Reich was convinced that sexual deprivation and frustration motivated much of the world’s chaos and warfare.

The assistant coach had the duty of calling in the chronicle of each game to the local newspaper and when he complained he was too busy to take care of it the head coach turned to Talese to take over the duties. "
In 1964 Talese publiGay Talesed The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (1964) a reporter-style non-fiction depiction of the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. As Carol Polsgrove points out in her history of Esquire in the Sixties it was the kind of reporting he liked to do best: "just being there observing waiting for the climactic moment when the mask would drop and true character would reveal itself.

As a writer for The New York Times and Esquire magazine in the 1960s he helped to define literary journalism. Talese is a visiting writer at the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California each spring.