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TRUTH WORTH TELLING

Name: TRUTH WORTH TELLING
Author: Scott Pelley
ISBN: 978-1-335-99914-6

A REPORTER'S SEARCH FOR MEANING IN THE STORIES OF OUR TIMES

by Scott Pelley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 2019

Piercing tributes to values and those who embody them mixed with crisp, detailed accounts of reporting in highly hazardous...

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Declaring that “values matter,” the 60 Minutes reporter and former CBS Evening News anchor examines a number of values, virtues, and vices he sees in America—and around the world.

In his debut, Pelley combines memoir, exposition, and exhortation to chronicle his long and honored career. His strong opinions, however, are not partisan: He assails our current president but also the Clintons and others, regardless of party, who have failed to adhere to the virtues he identifies, such as gallantry, devotion, gratitude, and vision. The text is organized thematically. The author begins with the efforts of the FDNY during 9/11 and ends with what reads like a “go-forth-and-do-good-work” graduation speech to new graduates at a journalism school. He includes tributes to (and denunciations of) well-known figures—e.g., George W. Bush, whom Pelley treats kindly and appreciatively for his 9/11 leadership and then takes to task for the Iraq War—and figures whom he escorts from the wings into the limelight. Among these are a military nurse in Iraq, the parents of Sandy Hook students, and Bao Tong, a member of the Chinese government who spoke against Tiananmen Square—and has paid a lifelong price. Occasionally, Pelley inserts between chapters a minisection entitled “Field Note,” mostly anecdotal, personal comments about his experiences or observations during his reporting days. One recurrent theme is the importance of free speech and the free press. He worries about the current climate, rife with the proliferation of fake news on social media. Pelley is consistently generous in his praise of his colleagues; producers, camera operators and many others earn high marks in the author’s gradebook. Of Bob Simon, for example, he writes, “I learned more from [him] than any other colleague.”

Piercing tributes to values and those who embody them mixed with crisp, detailed accounts of reporting in highly hazardous locations.

Pub Date: May 21, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-335-99914-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Hanover Square Press

Review Posted Online: March 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)