A breezy yet informative behind-the-microphone look at how the news is reported—and at why and how the Fourth Estate has become one of the most reviled professional categories in America today. Veteran CBS reporter Stahl entered TV journalism in an era when women were supposed to provide pleasant filler, but soon she made a name for herself, after she was assigned to cover a “third-rate burglary” that turned into Watergate. And what a niche she carved: two decades covering the White House during the Carter, Reagan, and Bush presidencies, eight years at the helm of Face the Nation, and eight years, so far, as a reporter for 60 Minutes. Stahl writes chattily and incisively of how the news is gathered, giving us insightful glimpses into some of this century’s most important news stories: Watergate, the Carter hostage crisis, Iran-Contra. Still, the book is more than a chronicle of one woman’s rise in journalism and her unreserved account of the trials of making it in a very male world. (Even so, Stahl the mother is refreshingly honest about her professional drive and how she’s managed to combine parenting with profession.) Rather, Reporting Live also takes an intriguing look at how journalism, especially TV journalism, has itself developed. The result is a fascinating chronicle reflecting Stahl’s views on both society and herself. Deregulation, for instance, in her judgment begat more stations even as technology begat more cable—and, yes, even more stations. As a result, TV journalists started “wet-fingering like the politicians, relying on polls so we could give the public what they wanted.” Exit hard-hitting, substantive news; enter tabloid news. News junkies will savor every sound-bite in this sassy memoir. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 13, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-82930-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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