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Conversations with Cronkite

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Like many baby boomers, I grew up with Walter Cronkite on the telly. Night after night, for decades he and his incredibly talented crew of CBS correspondents brought the news into my home. Cronkite, projecting an air of professionalism, objectivity and unflappability, earned my family's trust and that of millions of Americans. While most Americans knew him solely as the CBS anchorman, previously he had a long and fruitful career in reporting, radio and television. That fascinating life and career is detailed IN CONVERSATIONS WITH CRONKITE.

In 1988, the UT-Austin Center for American History decided to create a media history archive and asked Cronkite, who had attended the University of Texas, to donate his papers as the archive's founding collection. Cronkite willingly accepted. The following year, he asked archive director Don Carleton's help in wiriting his autobiography. Carleton agreed. Every three to four months for the next three years, he and Cronkite met and discussed Cronkite's life and career, taping each session. From those sessions came Cronkite's autobiography A REPORTER'S LIFE, published in 1996. Following Cronkite's death in 2009, Carleton decided to edit and publish the transcripts of some 60 hours of conversations he had with "the most trusted man in America," the result: CONVERSATIONS WITH CRONKITE.

After short chapters on Cronkite's early life and schooling, Cronkite's life is laid out chronologically, relating his beginnings as a United Press reporter, his wartime service covering the 8th AF, postwar assignment to Moscow, joining CBS, his early TV series such as 'You are There' and 'Twentieth Century,' the creation of 'CBS Evening News' and all the momentous events they covered, his retirement and post-anchor years. Each chapter is composed of question-and-answer sessions on the various subjects or sub-topics.

It soon becomes evident that CONVERSATIONS WITH CRONKITE aren't just oral history transcripts but the recorded conversations of two friends. Carleton is a perceptive, insightful interviewer and he skillfully leads Cronkite through a fascinating life. Cronkite, in turn, comes across as a straight shooter, down-to-earth and honest and much concerned with doing the right thing. Morley Safer, in his foreword, talks about the reader discovering that Cronkite was "as ornery and petty and vain as most of us," but I disagree. Cronkite has his ornery moments but I think he revealed himself as a hard-working professional who created a tremendous career by seizing opportunities when they presented themselves rather than creating and following a master plan. Several times he tells tales on himself that show him to be eminently human. And it's hard not to like someone who peppers their conversations with "Oh, boy," "My, gosh" and "Oh, golly."

CONVERSATIONS WITH CRONKITE is filled with first-person reminiscenes of momentous events and historic figures - Ed Murrow, the Nuremburg trials, Ike, CBS figures like Salant, Paley, Sevareid and Rather, JFK, the space program, Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate, etc. Seeing all those events from Cronkite's perspective makes for a fascinating, informative and entertaining walk through the history of the 20th Century.

In short, I very much enjoyed CONVERSATIONS WITH CRONKITE. It was a great read and one final opportunity to share time with an exemplary newsman and a marvelous human being. Highly recommended.

Conversations with Cronkite offers a fine oral history of newsman Walter Cronkite, who comments on everything from the history he's witnessed and reported to the state of journalism and reporting. Suitable both for college-level journalism libraries and general-interest collections, this offers selections from interviews between the journalist and his friend, oral historian Dr. Don Carleton. Very highly recommended!

This book truly is a conversation. You can hear Cronkite's speech cadence as he candidly recalls the events recounted by Carleton. Carleton's knowledge of his subject's life and career is impressive in its attention to detail. My husband and I are reading this book aloud so we can discuss these events and share our own memories of them. It is a delightful experience.

Don Carleton interviewed Walter Cronkite over a period of 3 years in preparation for Cronkite writing his autobiography, `A Reporter's Life'. This book contains information from those interviews. Carleton is careful to point out that this book is an accompaniment to that autobiography, there are incidents missing completely that are in Cronkite's book. This also contains very little about Cronkite's early years or his family, for that you have to go elsewhere. What it does contain are the candid thoughts and opinions of one of America's most trusted newsmen.

There are pictures in the beginning of each chapter. The chapters cover the subjects of: his beginnings in journalism, his time as a war correspondent, the Nuremberg War Trials, his time at CBS and his growing fame, presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan, the moon landing, leaving the Evening News and his time during the post-CBS years. The book is in the form of an interview, with Carleton's questions and then Cronkite's reply. There is a detailed index.

You are drawn into this book, the reading and style and finally you can hear Cronkite's voice and inflections, his opinions are given on many, Tom Wolfe and `The Right Stuff', world leaders such as Anwar Sadat, working with Wally Schirra, Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur Clarke and colleagues such as, Eric Sevareid, Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner and Edward R. Murrow.
You can see the growth of journalism in his recollections, from newspaper and radio to TV and 24 hour coverage of events like the moon landing. This shows what an astute observer he was of human nature and the world he reported on.
This is of significant interest to those who wish to learn more of recent history, news and journalism and of Cronkite himself and the world in general.