A feisty memoir by politically conservative and personally brash TV foreign correspondent Trotta. Trotta begins her network news career at NBC during the Vietnam War, and her war at home is the battle to become the first woman TV war correspondent. She wins a six-month tour of the war zone in 1968, after two reporters get wounded, one goes crazy, and the network's ``cannon fodder was getting scarce.'' In Vietnam, she's at her best, dodging bullets with her cameraman and the boys. Trotta believes that the only thing wrong about the war is ``the U.S. government's half-hearted commitment to it,'' and she sympathizes deeply with the soldiers while being attacked by antiwar superiors at NBC, including John Chancellor. Her later assignments are also plums: civil war in the Philippines and Ireland, the Iran hostage crisis, the invasion of Grenada, and even the Claus von BÅlow trial. She takes them all on with a growing sense of bitterness and disillusionment with TV news, and a temper that has her pushing and bullying her way to a story. Finally, her aggressiveness gets her demoted at NBC just after she wins an Overseas Press Club Award for a series on famine in Africa. She then goes over to CBS, where she is eventually fired at age 41, in part for being ``too old.'' Here is her chance to get even by releasing tidbits like the fact that WNBC anchorman Chuck Scarborough has no books in his office, and that Dan Rather's starting contract as an anchor was for $20 million instead of the $8 million reported. Well drawn, exciting, and biting, but in the end Trotta's seeming vindictiveness overwhelms her story.
Pub Date: June 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-67529-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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