Customer Reviews

Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium

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This is a delightful way to gain wisdom and be entertained at the same time. This is a "must-read" for all baby boomers.

Few figures in today's media equal the authority, knowledge and insight of Daniel Schorr. Schorr speaks with an authenticity borne not only of longevity, but of wisdom.

Newsmen and commentators of his caliber are all too rare, and becoming more rare in today's media. Dan, thank you for sharing your thoughts and observations.

This book took me on a fascinating journey back through the events of fifteen years in our very recent history as I read Schoor's essays on NPR from 1991 through March of 2007. It was particularly interesting to read the book as I was also watching the excellent 4 1/2 hour Frontline presentation "Bush's War". The reader is able to look backward and meet Schoor's wisdom and confusion and critical analysis as he looks forward and struggles through our difficult struggle to maintain some sense of balance and be the light of democracy we hope to be.

9/11 looms ahead throughout the first two thirds of the book, but when it happens Daniel Schorr contributes his thoughts in a calm, thoughtful, unhysterical manner that is the tone of all his essays. At the end of every year, Schorr writes an essay on "The State of Peace on Earth" in that year. Most of the years the state of the peace was not very good.

In 2001 he wrote: "....There are organizations that annually tally the number of armed conflicts as a way of judging how peaceful the year has been. a year ago the National Defense Council Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia, counted sixty-eight cross-border and internal conflicts, an increase of three over the previous year. In the age of the war against terrorism, counting conflicts no longer works. There is one great transcendent conflict, a twenty-first-century version of struggling with the barbarians at the gates.

When Saint Luke spoke of peace on Earth, it was not a prediction but a prayer. With it went another prayer, 'Goodwill toward men.' It was to say you can't have one without the other. This year, sad to say in much of the world we had neither."

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This is an excellent collection of top observations/commentaries from the Senior News Analyst for National Public Radio (NPR). In his fatherly-soft style, Daniel Schorr delivers witty and intelligence essays, always with an eye for the future in an uncertain world. Presented in chronological order, these essays date to the early 1990's, as the first President Bush dealt with the post-Soviet era and the first gulf war. Then we get Schorr's views from Clinton era on health care and welfare reform, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, Serbia, Newt Gingrich, and the rise of terrorist threats. The last set of observations cover the 21st Century, including 9-11, the war on terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bush/Cheney's questionable view of their power under the Constitution. Throughout these pages is Schorr's annual, end-of-year examination of the (usually sad) state of peace in the world. The author not only provides solid news analysis, but a pretty good lesson of history and current events for the years 1991-2007.

Born in 1916, Daniel Schorr first reported in 1939, worked for CBS from 1953-1976 (resigning to avoid revealing a source), has been with NPR for two decades, and at this writing is still going strong at age 92. These pages are clearly worth your time, and when reading them listen carefully - you just might hear Schorr's voice coming from the direction of your radio.