Journalists Books - Page 17

The Corpse Had a Familiar Face: Covering Miami, America's Hottest Beat

Edna Buchanan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Pick of the Litter 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

First book. Mesmerizing. Tough, critical, witty, a read-to-the-end book (forget sleeping for about two days). A tough lady who won the respect of law enforcement and fellow novelist. Humorous, sad, caring,
historical and factual with no sugar coating. Just the facts, Ma'am! Street smart. If you don't have a member of law enforcement in your family, you need to read this book to garner some idea of their lives.

Editorial Review:

For eighteen years, Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna Buchanan had one of the most exciting, frightening, and heartbreaking jobs a newspaperwoman could have -- working the police beat for the Miami Herald. Having covered more crimes than most cops, Buchanan garnered a reputation as a savvy, gritty writer with a unique point of view and inimitable style. Now, back in print after many years, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face is her classic collection of true stories, as witnessed and reported by Buchanan herself. From cold-blooded murder, to violence in the heat of passion, to the everyday insanity of the city streets, Edna Buchanan reveals it all in her own trademark blend of compassionate reporting, hard-nosed investigation, and wry humor that has made her a legend in the world of journalism.

Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own

Patricia J. Williams

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Only Book in the Wellesley Bookstore in the 1st week of August 2005! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Patricia Williams has a column in the Nation, Diary of a Mad Law Professor, which I found out about
through reading this great book. I was at a music conference at Wellesley last summer and happened
upon this in the bookstore. There were not many other books, but thank God they decided at least
to have something there by an alumna, because the three books I had brought were not wearing well:
1) a cynical though I suppose funny report on Howard Dean's presidential campaign, 2) a book about how
to survive in a nasty office environment and 3) I forget the third. Not great energy! But Williams' book was
very warm and funny. I was particularly admiring of how much she knew of her own family background.
A lot of family background sections in the beginnings of autobiographies can be ho-hum. This one was
a wild ride! It reads as though she knew her ancestors personally. The book is a very important discussion
of race relations and you just want everything to go her way. The college bookstore had a much bigger selection THIS year.

Editorial Review:

A warm and seductive meditation on the personal and political from a renowned columnist and "one of the great theorists of race and law" (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.).

With her trademark wit and insight, Patricia Williams relates stories from the many facets of her life--as a lawyer, scholar, writer, African-American, descendant of slaves, mother, and single, fifty-something woman--always aware of the ironies inherent in situations where her many identities don't conform to societal expectations. The Open House of Williams's imagination takes us on a funny, often provocative, and entertaining journey which includes Oprah, Williams's Aunt Mary who passed as white, her Best White Friend, and tips on how to eat a watermelon without fear of racial judgment.

In Defiance of Hitler: The Secret Mission of Varian Fry

Carla Killough McClafferty

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

On August 4, 1940, an unassuming American journalist named Varian Fry made his way to Marseilles, France, carrying in his pockets the names of approximately two hundred artists and intellectuals – all enemies of the new Nazi regime. As a volunteer for the Emergency Rescue Committee, Fry’s mission was to help these refugees flee to safety, then return home two weeks later. As more and more people came to him for assistance, however, he realized the situation was far worse than anyone in America had suspected – and his role far greater than he had imagined. He remained in France for over a year, refusing to leave until he was forcibly evicted.


At a time when most Americans ignored the atrocities in Europe, Varian Fry engaged in covert operations, putting himself in great danger, to save strangers in a foreign land. He was instrumental in the rescue of over two thousand refugees, including the novelist Heinrich Mann and the artist Marc Chagall.

Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography

Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is more than a lavishly illustrated companion book to the Mark Twain PBS series. National Book Critics Circle Award winner Geoffrey C. Ward, Dayton Duncan, and Ken Burns have produced a cogent, colorful portrait of the man who forged our national identity in the sentences he spun. Excellent though the brisk narrative may be, the book's greatest pleasures are the extensive Twain quotations; no one has topped his description of the Mississippi River, and he had a salty remark for every occasion (charged an outrageous fee for a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee, he cracked, "Do you wonder now that Christ walked?"). Passages from his correspondence reveal a man of deep feeling; letters to his wife Livy movingly express enduring marital love, and the grief-stricken note following his beloved daughter Susy's sudden death is almost unbearable to read. Excerpts from less well known works like "The War Prayer" highlight Twain's scathing contempt for imperialism and hypocrisy alike. Several freestanding pieces by various admirers (including novelist Russell Banks and actor Hal Holbrook) supplement the authors' text; most notable among them is critic Jocelyn Chadwick's persuasive defense of Twain's frequent use of "The Six-Letter Word" (n----r) in Huckleberry Finn as a necessary and still-shocking device to confront Americans with the moral horror of racism. Gracefully synthesizing current scholarship, this warmhearted biography provides the perfect introduction to Mark Twain. --Wendy Smith

La Vida Loca (Always Running): El Testimonio de un Pandillero en Los Angeles

Luis J. Rodriguez

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"A los doce años, Luis Rodríguez ya era un veterano de la guerra entre las pandillas de East Los Angeles. Atraído por una cultura pandillera aparentemente insuperable, fue testigo de un sinfín de balaceras, golpizas y arrestos y, más tarde, con un miedo cada vez mayor, presenció cómo las drogas, los asesinatos, los suicidios y una delincuencia callejera carente de sentido cobraban la vida de amigos y familiares.

Poco tiempo después, Rodríguez encontro la manera de dejar atrás la vida del barrio a través de la educación y el poder de las palabras. Así pudo liberarse de años de violencia y desesperación. Una vez alcanzado el éxito como poeta chicano varias veces galardonado, Luis llegé a pensar que las calles ya no lo perseguirían, pero entonces su hijo ingresó en una pandilla. Rodríguez luchó por su hijo mediante el relato de su historia personal. La Vida Loca es una vívida croónica que se adentra en las motivaciones de la vida de las pandillas y nos advierte de la muerte y la destrucción que, tarde o temprano, se lleva la vida de sus participantes.

A ratos desgarradoramente triste y cruel, La Vida Loca es a la larga una historia verdadera, llena de inspiración, esperanza y sabiduría, y una lección duramente aprendida para las nuevas generaciones.

Kasztner's Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust

Anna Porter

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The heroic story of the “Hungarian Oscar Schindler” who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis, only to be accused of collaboration and assassinated in Israel twelve years after WWII ended.

Oscar Schindler’s and Raoul Wallenberg’s efforts to save people from Nazi extinction are legendary; Rezso Kasztner, by contrast, is practically unknown, even though he may have been the greatest rescuer of Jews during World War II. He was also the most controversial, and that, along with the relative lack of focus on events in Hungary toward the end of the war, has no doubt led to his anonymity. Now, with the publication of Anna Porter’s remarkable chronicle, Kasztner’s achievements are in full view.

When the German army invaded its ally Hungary in March 1944, followed soon after by Adolf Eichmann and his SS, Rezso Kasztner and a small group of Zionist activists stood in the way of mass deportations. They had met the well-informed Schindler, providing him with funds for food and clothing, and had been involved in previous efforts to rescue Jews from Slovakia and Poland. Now, in meeting after meeting with Eichmann and other SS officers, Kasztner negotiated for freedom, exploiting the Nazi weaknesses of greed and need—“blood for goods,” as the Nazis called it—organizing a train out of Hungary for almost 2,000 while several thousand more were protected in work camps in Austria. Inevitably he saved some and not others. After testifying at the Nuremberg trials, Kasztner emigrated to Israel where, in 1956, he was stunningly convicted of collaborating with the Nazis more than a decade before. As he awaited the appeal that would ultimately exonerate him, he was assassinated by right-wing activists in Tel Aviv on March 4, 1957.

Based on interviews with those who were on the train and with family members of those denied a place on it, as well as documents and correspondence not previously published, Anna Porter tells the dramatic full story of one of the heroes of the twentieth century.

Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times

Helen Thomas

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Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Born in 1920, Helen Thomas was one of United Press International's very few female journalists for years. She promoted herself to UPI's White House Press Corps in 1960 ("I just started showing up every day") and has reported on eight administrations. Her episodic, old-fashioned autobiography contains anecdotes about each president, their first ladies, and their staff. Her stories are often funny, and she doesn't mind when the joke's on her: "Isn't there a war somewhere we can send her to?" Colin Powell inquired after being buttonholed at a party; President Carter's mother said the greatest lesson she learned in 80 years was, "Never to open my mouth around Helen Thomas." She's also fair: even the press secretaries get balanced treatment, though Thomas criticizes the White House's growing efforts to "manage" the news. (Her most affectionate political portrait is of the unmanageable Watergate wife Martha Mitchell.) Thomas pays loving tribute to her parents, hardworking, religious Syrian immigrants, and to her late husband, Associated Press reporter Doug Cornell, but she keeps the focus on the people and public events she covered. Scrupulously impartial when reporting the news, she feels free here to be bluntly opinionated, especially in her unrepentant advocacy of the media's responsibility to ask uncomfortable questions, even when the public condemns them as intrusive. --Wendy Smith

This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV

Bob Schieffer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent book 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Bob Schieffer is not only an outstanding reporter and anchor but an excellent story teller as well. His accounts of the history he has seen make the reader feel a part of the story. Highly recommended to anybody interested in knowing more about the stories that have shaped our lives.

They should've kept Bob instead of Katie 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I enjoyed this book because it gave an insider's perspective on many of the most important news stories of my lifetime. Having worked for a CBS affiliate in the early 80s, it brought back many memories. But what I took away was a sense of Bob Schieffer's genuine, unflashy but solid character. I've never met him, but I watched his work over the years as the "backup" anchor for CBS News. Stars have come and gone, but he has always handled that duty with quiet grace. He was never one to grand-stand, to wax with righteous indignation or pomposity. He's never tried a special sweater or a silly signoff (remember "Courage"?) to boost his ratings. I'll bet he never even owned a blow dryer. Just did his job, said his piece, bringing hard work and common sense to the task. To me, this book was a heartening reminder that the basics really can pay off in the long run.

Editorial Review:

Bob Schieffer started his reporting career in Texas when he was barely old enough to buy a beer, joined CBS News in 1969, and became one of the few correspondents ever to have covered all four major Washington beats: the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Capitol Hill. Over the past four decades, he's seen it all-and now he's sharing the after-hours tales only his colleagues know.

Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent

Larry Berman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

You Cannot Have it Both Ways 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I might not be as forgiving as some people, but I certainly would have felt betrayed by this man. He seeks to justify everything by stating that he felt the Americans did not belong in Vietnam. Maybe so. But what he did was so deceiful.To just look at the fact that he often helped those closest and known to him from suffering any harm, neglects the hundreds of thousands who died and were wounded as a result of his actions. To top it all off he sent his family to the US when the Communists came !! No doubt for a better life !!This fellow must have been of fairly limited intellect , or at least uneducated.And don't tell me was educated in the US - they let him do some courses... big deal! Did he really believe the Americans would attempt to rule Vietnam the way the French did ? Yes, they would take advantage of economic opportunities ( who does'nt), but what did he think they would have done if the South succeeded ? A good insight into blind nationalism and deceit by one of the most two faced people I have ever encountered. I still cannot understand his mindset.

Editorial Review:

During the Vietnam War, Time reporter Pham Xuan An befriended everyone who was anyone in Saigon, including American journalists such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, the CIA's William Colby, and the legendary Colonel Edward Lansdale—not to mention the most influential members of the South Vietnamese government and army. None of them ever guessed that he was also providing strategic intelligence to Hanoi, smuggling invisible ink messages into the jungle inside egg rolls. His early reports were so accurate that General Giap joked, "We are now in the U.S. war room."

In Perfect Spy, Larry Berman, who An considered his official American biographer, chronicles the extraordinary life of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating spies.

More Than Money: True Stories of People Who Learned Life's Ultimate Lesson

Neil Cavuto

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this phenomenal New York Times bestseller, Neil Cavuto shares the inspirational stories of an array of personal heroes, many of whom motivated him to continue his career as he battled cancer and multiple sclerosis.

Joining the nascent Fox News Channel in 1996, Neil was set to establish himself as one of business journalism's most important players. Ten years after being diagnosed with cancer, however, Cavuto was dealt another body blow: He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As friends and strangers alike gathered to offer their support, he became attuned to the stories of others in the business world who also triumphed over serious setbacks of their own. More Than Money shares with us their personal stories, among them:

• Evelyn Lauder, the cosmetics executive who pioneered the pink ribbon campaign after her own battle with breast cancer
• Richard Branson, who overcame dyslexia and used his creativity and entrepreneurial spirit to build the Virgin empire
• Michael Wilson, a senior executive at the Royal Bank of Canada, who launched a public campaign to raise awareness of and money for treating depression after his son committed suicide
• Jon Huntsman, who survived two bouts with cancer to build one of the largest petrochemical companies in the world and found one of the most prominent cancer research centers

Moving, sincere, and wise, More Than Money profiles individuals whose stories are a testament to courage, compassion, and dignity in the face of adversity.