A thoughtful record of the days when the going was good—and television was both informing and entertaining.
From veteran TV newsman and foreign correspondent Utley, a memoir of life in the newsgathering business.
Utley, the son of a noted radio announcer, is here more intent on describing the changes he has witnessed in television than offering confessional details of his private life. He joined NBC in 1963 (after college and military service) as its stringer in Brussels, where his boss was John Chancellor—a useful contact and good friend. Posted next to Vietnam, he was able to witness the war escalate firsthand as the US presence increased. During the years that Utley covered the war, television became an important player in shaping public opinion, and it was clear to him then that the visual reporting was in large part responsible for America’s losing the battle to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. He suggests that 1963 (when polls found for the first time that a majority of Americans got their news from TV) was the year that the US finally became a television society, and he sees the years that followed as a golden age of television news programs—when Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, and Walter Cronkite became revered national icons. But he also observes that “if in the 1960s the news on television was the reporting of events, in the 1970s it was increasingly about how to attract viewers and a mass audience.” He recalls how these changes affected his career, describes interviews with such notables as Anwar Sadat and Albert Speer, relates his experiences covering overseas wars, and includes such “soft” news stories as a Club Med ski trip to Switzerland. Although realistic about the end of television as he once knew it (and the networks’ current preference for stories that entertain or invite empathy), Utley is optimistic that cable stations like C-SPAN will provide a niche for serious new broadcasts.
A thoughtful record of the days when the going was good—and television was both informing and entertaining.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-891620-94-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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