Non Fiction Book Reviews #2

A GOOD LIFE:

NEWSPAPERING AND OTHER ADVENTURES

by Ben Bradley

In 1965 Ben Bradlee took over the helm of The Washington Post. At that time it was D.C.'s second paper and suffered from that image. But Bradlee sought to change that and was fully supported by Post publisher Katherine Graham. At the Post Bradlee's first crisis was covering the riots after the death of Martin Luther King and keeping the police from their photographs, which they didn't. then in 1971 came the infamous Pentagon Papers and the Post first battle with the United States government. With the full support of Katherine Graham the papers were published, the government challenged and lost, and the staff became as one. Next came Watergate and with that The Washington Post reinvented modern investigative journalism, and under his leadership, took, what seemed to be a minor break-in, the Watergate story, and brought down a president and made other politicians very careful. Ben Bradlee brought the Post eighteen Pulitzer prizes and made the Post the most respected paper. Before that he served four years on a destroyer in the Pacific during World War 2, apprenticed for Newsweek in Paris, and then was Newsweek's Washington Bureau chief, where his neighbor was Congressman Jack Kennedy. After that came the Post and the rest is history. A fascinating and earthy autobiography of American journalism in the twentieth century.

A MEMOIR

by David Brinkley

David Brinkley was born and grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was educated at the University of North Carolina and Vanderbilt University. He arrived in Washington in 1943 and got to witness the change in our government from regional to world power. During that time he got to play poker with Harry Truman, ride the rails with Winston Churchill, being whisked off by helicopter to Camp David by Lyndon Johnson, receiving the Medal of Freedom from George Bush, and walking the beach with D-Day veterans. Of course, David Brinkley writes about the team-up in 1956 with Chet Huntley that became the much celebrated news program The Huntly-Brinkley Report that during its fourteen years won every major broadcasting award. Later he became co-anchor with John Chancellor and commentator on NBC Nightly News. From 1981 to the present has conducted his own news commentary and interviews on This Week with David Brinkley. Winner of ten Emmy awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards, David Brinkley writes about America and himself from his own unique vantage point.

I'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS!:

A MEMOIR

by Art Buichwald

After his adventures in Leaving Home, twenty-two-year-old Art Buichwald, in June 1948, one of the army of "fresh, peach-cheeked Americans" invaded postwar France ready for his greatest adventure. Over the next fourteen years he would reinvent himself, land a job with the legendary Paris Herald Tribune, although he had no legitimate experience, and telling people where to go and what to eat mostly based on his food-tasting experiences with the Marine Corp mess and the USC student union. Along the way Art began hobnobbing with some of the most powerful and famous people in Europe. He crashed costume balls in Venice, hunting bats in Sussex, ran with the bulls in Pamplona, clashed with the police in Paris, and dined with gangsters in Naples. Along the way he reported the foibles of the International Set and became everybody's favorite American in Paris. Art also writes about meeting and marrying a redhead named Ann, adopted three children, and becoming what his foster childhood never prepared him to be: a family man. Written in Art Buichwald's delightful storytelling style, this book, like the first, stops too soon leaving the reader wanting more.

MOVING VIOLATIONS:

WAR ZONES, WHEELCHAIRS,

AND DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE

by John Hockenberry

Although confined to a wheelchair, John Hockenberry proves that "handicapped" is only a state of mind. He is an Emmy and two-time Peabody award winner who spent more than a decade with National Public Radio as a general assignment reporter, Middle East correspondent, and program host and has been a correspondent for ABC News and NBC News. Paraplegic since an auto accident,he writes about riding a mule up a hillside in Iraq surrounded by mudstained Kurdish refugees, having his wheelchair pushed by a friendly Iranian during the Ayatolah's funeral while around him people chanted "Death to all Americans," whey he auditioned to be the first journalist in space, writes about the inaccessibility of the New York Subway System, how he got into journalism in the first place, and how his life changed at the age of nineteen with the auto accident, and what he has done to make his co-workers understand that having a disability doesn't diminish a person. A frank and honest memoir that is also entertaining and outrageous that shows who obstacles--physical and emotional--can be overcome again and again and why he is an ace reporter not afraid to bring back the story, no matter the danger. Do read!

POISON PEN:

THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF TWO TABLOID WRITERS

by Lysa Moskowitz-Mateu & David LaFontaine

What does it take to write for the tabloids? Do you need to sell you soul to the devil? What ever it takes, these two did it and now they've written about their experiences. Lysa Moskowitz-Mateu and David LaFontaine are a husband-and-wife team of tabloid reporters who write about the one year they spent traveling all over the continent as they chased down headline stories for the Star, the National Enquirer, and the Globe. Tabloid writers are considered to be the "vermin media," but, as they report, mainstream reporters always pumped them for information. In this honest account read about: Rooting through garbage and empty hotel rooms for evidence of hanky panky; confronting insane star stalkers in their homes; giving out false leads to other tabloid reporters to sabotage the competition; racing in a hot air balloon to catch a glimpse of the Taylor-Fortensky wedding; staying up all night in a hotel room next door to Ted Danson and Whoppi Goldberg listening to sounds of their love making, and so much more. This account will entertain the reader with its high jinx and hock with its excesses. A fascinating story about a style of reporting that is not only limited to the tabloids.

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