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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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