A warts-and-all account that’s full of surprises, and with plenty of insight into the world of nonprofit media.
A sprawling history of an American institution that gets plenty of love, if too little money.
“It was an odd assortment of folks,” said one of the first reporters to join National Public Radio when it went live in 1971, adding that he was hired “as a safety in case these crazies went off the deep end.” Some of the “crazies,” Oney’s comprehensive history reveals, were pretty crazy indeed, especially when cocaine became commonplace in the 1980s: “There was nothing like snorting lines while wrestling with a complex story that required dozens of precise cuts and aural nuances,” observes the longtime journalist and author. For some, “it was like ingesting a focusing device that enhanced one’s powers of calibration.” That such antics raised managerial hackles was another matter. NPR was famously packed with a talented staff that included Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, Scott Simon, and Noah Adams, each of whom brought tremendous skills to the job of reporting. Some of those skills were perhaps not the stuff of other media hotshots: there was the nerdiness—quite successful, eventually—of Ira Glass, while, as Oney notes, Stamberg’s standout strength was “a willingness to pose the obvious question,” the answer to which “everyone wanted to know.” Talent and superb journalism notwithstanding, by Oney’s account NPR was always strapped for money and sometimes held hostage by a hostile, politically much more conservative Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Its management and internal politics were sometimes messy as well: One boneheaded executive decision that fortunately didn’t endure was to “de-emphasize distinctive personalities” and hire “interchangeable and replaceable hosts.” And like so many institutions, it seems, NPR sometimes talked a good game when it came to equity but still was slow to promote women and hire minority staff; as one Black executive noted drily, “NPR news was not friendly to outsiders.”
A warts-and-all account that’s full of surprises, and with plenty of insight into the world of nonprofit media.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781451656091
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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