Cronkite [Hardcover]

Douglas Brinkley (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 29, 2012

Douglas Brinkley presents the definitive, revealing biography of an American legend: renowned news anchor Walter Cronkite.

An acclaimed author and historian, Brinkley has drawn upon recently disclosed letters, diaries, and other artifacts at the recently opened Cronkite Archive to bring detail and depth to this deeply personal portrait.

He also interviewed nearly two hundred of Cronkite’s closest friends and colleagues, including Andy Rooney, Leslie Stahl, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, Les Moonves, Christiane Amanpour, Katie Couric, Bob Schieffer, Ted Turner, Jimmy Buffett, and Morley Safer, using their voices to instill dignity and humanity in this study of one of America’s most beloved and trusted public figures.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A majestic biography. . . . Cronkite is evidence that a job can be done just about perfectly. That goes for the man and this exceptional biography.” (The New York Times Book Review )

“With the style and precision worthy of his subject, Douglas Brinkley’s biography of the late Walter Cronkite gives the icon his due. . . . A keen, fair-minded book.” (The San Francisco Chronicle )

“Walter Cronkite exemplified the glorious age of trusted journalism. In this deeply researched and brilliantly analytic biography, Douglas Brinkley captures his essence. He treats Cronkite as not just an icon, but as a real human with passions, loves, and occasional enmities. It’s a fascinating and valuable tale.” (Walter Isaacson )

“Douglas Brinkley’s absorbing and well-researched book recaptures the high solstice of American television journalism and the man who most exemplified that moment. It also illuminates, behind the scenes, a Walter Cronkite that millions of Americans thought they knew, but, as Brinkley’s book now shows us, didn’t.” (Michael Beschloss )

“Exhaustively researched and beautifully written, Cronkite is a classic. Douglas Brinkley has written his best book yet. This is a fascinating story that will be read for years to come.” (Debby Applegate )

“In this absorbing and sensitively-written biography, Douglas Brinkley has captured not only the life and momentous decades of a uniquely American legend, but also the heartbeat of a nation in its times of both triumph and tragedy.” (Ronald Steel )

“This sweeping narrative of Walter Cronkite’s life is irresistibly told, beautifully written, and deeply researched. Douglas Brinkley has produced one trustworthy biography after another, each one commanding widespread respect and admiration. And this is one of the very best.” (Doris Kearns Goodwin )

“The personal and professional life of Walter Cronkite is an American treasure - and we should all be grateful to Douglas Brinkley for telling it so well.” (Tom Brokaw )

“A sweeping and masterful biography.” (Newsweek )

“A superb biography. . . . If only we had Walter Cronkite today.” (Tina Brown, Newsweek )

“Cronkite’s career has vast scope, and cumulative effect of this book is illuminating, not only about the man himself but also about the way he filtered history for a nation.” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times )

“An ambitious and deeply researched biography. . . . Cronkite magically transports the reader to a bygone era. . . . Recounted here in detail, with scholarly grasp and smooth narrative flow, are the familiar milestones and more obscure regions of Cronkite’s life.” (The Boston Globe )

“Informed, wide-ranging, clear, accessible. . . . This richly detailed and impeccably researched biography brings you into a vivid life,. . . . A thorough, even-handed and illuminating work that goes beyond image and myth about the broadcast legend for a full, frank and fascinating portrait.” (Newsday )

“A tremendous read. . . . Brinkley’s book brings this man intimately to light, in all his petty maneuvers and all his grandeur. I gobbled up every page.” (Robert MacNeil, The Washington Post )

From the Back Cover

For decades, Walter Cronkite was known as "the most trusted man in America." Millions across the nation welcomed him into their homes, first as a print reporter for the United Press on the front lines of World War II, and later, in the emerging medium of television, as a host of numerous documentary programs and as anchor of the CBS Evening News, from 1962 until his retirement in 1981. Yet this very public figure, undoubtedly the twentieth century's most revered journalist, was a remarkably private man; few know the full story of his life. Drawing on unprecedented access to Cronkite's private papers as well as interviews with his family and friends, Douglas Brinkley now brings this American icon into focus as never before.

Brinkley traces Cronkite's story from his roots in Missouri and Texas through the Great Depression, during which he began his career, to World War II, when he gained notice reporting with Allied troops from North Africa, D-day, and the Battle of the Bulge. In 1950, Edward R. Murrow recruited him to work for CBS, where he covered presidential elections, the space program, Vietnam, and the first televised broadcasts of the Olympic Games, as both a reporter and later as an anchor for the evening news. Cronkite was also witness to—and the nation's voice for—many of the most profound moments in modern American history, including the Kennedy assassination, Apollos 11 and 13, Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the Iran hostage crisis.

Epic, intimate, and masterfully written, Cronkite is the much-anticipated biography of an extraordinary American life, told by one of our most brilliant and respected historians.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 832 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition (May 29, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061374261
• ISBN-13: 978-0061374265
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 2.3 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #65,924 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Douglas Brinkley is currently a Professor of History at Rice University and a Fellow at the James Baker III Institute of Public Policy. He completed his bachelor's degree at Ohio State University and received his doctorate in U.S. Diplomatic History from Georgetown University in 1989. He then spent a year at the U.S. Naval Academy and Princeton University teaching history. While a professor at Hofstra University, Dr. Brinkley spearheaded the American Odyssey course, in which he took students on numerous cross-country treks where they visited historic sites and met seminal figures in politics and literature. Dr. Brinkley's 1994 book, The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey chronicled his first experience teaching this innovative on-the-road class which became the progenitor to C-SPAN's Yellow School Bus.

Five of Dr. Brinkley's books have been selected as New York Times "Notable Books of the Year": Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years(1992), Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal, with Townsend Hoopes (1992), The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House (1998), Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company and a Century of Progress (2003), and The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2006).

Five of his most recent publications have become New York Times best-sellers: The Reagan Diaries, (2007), The Great Deluge (2006), The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion (2005), Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War (2004) and Voices of Valor: D-Day: June 6, 1944 with Ronald J. Drez (2004). The Great Deluge (2006), was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy prize and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book award.

Before coming to Rice, Dr. Brinkley served as Professor of History and Director of the Roosevelt Center at Tulane University in New Orleans. From 1994 until 2005 he was Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History and Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. During his tenure there he wrote two books with the late Professor Ambrose: Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (1997) and The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002). On the literary front, Dr. Brinkley has edited Jack Kerouac's diaries, Hunter S. Thompson's letters and Theodore Dreiser's travelogue. His work on civil rights includes Rosa Parks (2000) and the forthcoming Portable Civil Rights Reader.

He won the Benjamin Franklin Award for The American Heritage History of the United States (1998) and the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot (1993). He was awarded the Business Week Book of the Year Award for Wheels for the World and was also named 2004 Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. He has received honorary doctorates from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Dr. Brinkley is contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Book Review and American Heritage. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly, he is also a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Club. In a recent profile, the Chicago Tribune deemed him "America's new past master."

Forthcoming publications include The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the crusade for America and a biography of Walter Cronkite.

He lives in Austin and Houston, Texas with his wife and three children.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

232 of 256 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars That's Not the Way It Was June 13, 2012

By Sam Roberts

Format:Kindle Edition

This book, by Douglas Brinkley is being touted as a portrait of Walter Cronkite, a man I knew very well for three decades. I worked at CBS News for more than 32 years and was a producer on the CBS Evening News for 14. Walter was my boss, but he was my friend as well. I traveled with him, played tennis with him regularly, was a guest in his home many times and worked very hard with him. I knew his family. This book, does not describe the man I knew.

Brinkley, in his plodding, turgid prose, depicts Walter as a drunk, petty, over-ambitious person, willing to do anything the Black Rock suits wanted. His constant references to Walter and drinking are startling. I saw Walter with a glass in his hand many, many times in many different places all over the country and overseas. I never, ever thought for a moment that he drank too much.

No one who knew him would ever think he was petty. He was warm, friendly and generous. He was the most competitive person I ever knew and the most demanding boss I ever had. But that's what made him Walter Cronkite and that's what made CBS News in that era the best TV news organization ever. Don't confuse those qualities with excessive ambition.

Brinkley needs a good fact checker. This book is chock-full of so many errors that I have to seriously question his reputation as an eminent historian. There seems to be an error on nearly every page or two, all of them minor and of little significance, but they are factual errors nevertheless. He misidentifies people and mixes up job descriptions and historical facts so often that I just shook my head. This is really sloppy work.

A few examples:
- Brinkley fails to mention Harry Reasoner in his list of potential rivals for Cronkite to succeed Douglas Edwards as the Evening News anchor in 1962. More than a few people thought that Harry was the number one alternative.
- Brinkley says that Charles Kuralt started the fabulous "On The Road" series in 1967 to capitalize on his popularity as the first anchor of the "CBS Sunday News Magazine." I don't remember any program by that name. He probably means "Sunday Morning," but that program didn't go on the air until 1979.
- Brinkley correctly says Daniel Schorr was one of the CBS News correspondents reporting on the Watergate scandal but he says Dan was posted at the Pentagon at the time. Huh? Schorr was never the Pentagon correspondent.

Many, many little errors like that are maddening to anyone who was there during those years.

Brinkley does get into the under-reported saga of the bad blood between Cronkite and Dan Rather but his analysis is wrong. It makes Walter seem merely like a broken has-been, a bitter old man who instigated and perpetuated this very real feud. In truth, it was the moody, volatile Rather and his acolytes who purged CBS News of all things Cronkite, humiliating him, insulting him at every opportunity and turning their backs on this great period in the history of CBS News, something they never came close to matching. It should not be forgotten that Rather was stuck in third place for most of his tenure and no one ever called him "the most trusted man in America."

Brinkley seems to go out of his way to make Cronkite the villain, to make him look bad during those unpleasant years. As Walter might have said: "That's not the way it was."

Save your money and don't bother.

77 of 89 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Shame on You, Professor Brinkley June 9, 2012

By skmd

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Brinkley is America's Historian and certainly has the resources to get us both the overall story and the inside scoop. The book is full of fascinating info on Walter Cronkite from archival sources and the subject's family, professional associates, and friends. It offers particularly juicy gossip about Cronkite's last years and his disdain for CBS and Dan Rather. It is worth reading for the information it provides about Uncle Walter's life and his opinions about newsmakers and the news.

But beware: this is not the quality of book one ever would expect to have been produced by a professional historian and writer, especially one with Brinkley's reputation. It is jarring and disappointing to think that Brinkley; his publisher; his associates; and Cronkite's family and influential admirers would let this extraordinarily sloppy book be published in its current state. Brinkley and his publisher have made a terrible mistake by releasing this book prematurely. That respected reviewers lead the book-buying public to believe the book is ready for prime time is an insult to both Cronkite and the reader.

This book is the most poorly edited biography I ever have read. It smacks of having been thrown together to meet a deadline. Opinion routinely is stated as fact (eg, "Brokaw of NBC News, as always, cut to the core of Cronkite adeptly"). Writing is sloppy (eg, "No television correspondent had covered civil rights or went after Nixon with more doggedness."). Nonsensical assertions abound (eg, "Cronkite's death was a national embarrassment because of how badly TV journalism had fared in his absence.") Proofreading is haphazard (eg, "Silver Seas" instead of Silversea). Non-sequitors are littered throughout (eg, "With an extra-high regard for scientists and professors, he visited the far reaches of the planet, trying to learn about the historic world..."). Wording is sometimes nonsensical ("and a colorful look at Mars photographs taken by Viking spacecraft in the 1970s"). Extraneous information unnecessarily diverts the reader (eg, "To Amanpour, just back in New York from Afghanistan [where she filmed the documentary Generation Islam about the lives of young Muslims]. Cronkite's life wasn't about anchoring the CBS News..." )

The book screams for a final edit. Until and unless it gets one, I give it an F for publication quality.

114 of 137 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Shocking, brutally honest, and probably the definitive word on "Uncle Walter" May 29, 2012

By Todd Bartholomew TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I was a bit stunned when I received an advance copy of Douglas Brinkley's biography on Walter Cronkite. I wasn't aware he was tackling this topic or quite why. Cronkite himself had written a delightful autobiography A Reporter's Life back in 1996 that won numerous awards and fairly cemented his place in the pantheon of journalistic greats. Yet reading over "Cronkite" I could see the relevance to the here and now and reporting over the past century and why this book is necessary. Cronkite has been turned into a plaster saint, as "Uncle Walter", the "most trusted man in journalism" and such. It was as though he was the George Washington of journalists. Could anyone really be so sainted, so pure, so removed from the day-to-day of journalistic necessity that he wasn't tainted by the mad desire to do anything to get a good story? As you'll quickly find, the answer is no. For all his avuncular traits "Uncle Walter" was all too human and all too prone to journalistic tendencies to get the lead on a juicy story.

Douglas Brinkley's "Cronkite" may be something of a shock to people more familiar with the avuncular image of "Uncle Walter" and indeed there is much here that will change and deepen a reader's perception and understanding of Walter Cronkite, who he was, and what he stood for. On the whole that's neither good nor bad; it gives us a fuller portrait of the man than his own A Reporter's Life and "Cronkite is really the first full length biography on him since his passing in 2009. In our current age of varied and diffuse news sources it may be hard to understand the weight and gravitas Cronkite's opinion and reporting carried in an era of only three major network channels. Cronkite had to opportunity not just to report but to shape opinion and was quite conscious of the impact his opinions and reporting carried. And despite this plaster saint image of Cronkite he was, at heart, a reporter of that era. The hagiography that has built up around Cronkite has smoothed and softened some of his hard edges and there is a tendency to think that reporting was somehow kinder and gentler in an earlier era. It certainly wasn't, as it was different and yet the same. Reporters could gloss over information that was relevant with a "gentlemen's agreement". To get access to FDR you had to advance the idea he was an ambulatory vital leader, not that he was largely paralytic and confined to a wheelchair. Extramarital affairs by political leaders had no relevance in a "boys will be boys" era yet reading over "Cronkite" you'll get a sense of how today's stories of phone hacking by "News of the World" is hardly anything new. There is a lot here that undoubtedly Cronkite never would have admitted and which is somewhat fascinating.

Probably one of the largest revelations is Cronkite's every involvement with Edward R. Murrow. Aspiring to be one of "Murrow's Boys" during WWII Murrow wanted Cronkite to travel to Stalingrad to report on the battle there. Cronkite reluctantly agreed, but upon further reflection reneged; a choice that Murrow apparently never forgave and which created tremendous enimosity between the two. Although they continued to work together at CBS Murrow relegated Cronkite to demeaning roles, but Cronkite found the opportunity to turn the tables with the 1952 political conventions. Murrow apparently hated the idea of covering the conventions and allowed Cronkite to be the lead at both. Cronkite reveled in this opportunity and decided to show up Murrow, going so far as to either condone or actively bugging some of the rooms where Republicans were meeting to strategize. Was it immoral or unethical? A good question and one that is not far removed from today, yet at the time it could be easily buried and even if exposed no one would think much of it, except that a reporter was doing what was necessary to get to the bottom of a good story. It was this coverage that brought Cronkite national attention and he quickly became the voice of live television rather than the creature of a scripted and controlled environment like Murrow. Quickly Cronkite became the master and Murrow slowly faded out. At the same time Cronkite was using his connections to build closer ties to Washington insiders and Presidents. It was during this time that Cronkite started closely paling around with Democratic Party movers and shaker who would give him close access, all while Cronkite ostensibly claimed to maintain his "journalistic neutrality," all while gathering information which gave him a journalistic edge. In many respects Cronkite was the last of the larger-than-life connected journalists like Joseph Alsop who could get Congressional leaders and Presidents to pick up the phone when they called. In fact, reading of Cronkite in this era reminded me some what of Merry's Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop - Guardians of the American Century .

"Cronkite" also points out how he and other journalists would mask their latent liberal tendencies despite their pleas of journalistic neutrality by largely sticking to reporting rather than editorializing or commenting. As one of the last of the WWII era journalists in prominence he had the cache to get interviews with political leaders and "Cronkite" points out that what passes for conservatism and liberalism has changed, blurred, and distorted over time. Ultimately it's hard for someone who grew up in that era to be dispassionate and objective about someone like Cronkite yet Brinkley retains that objectivity in a manner that is laudable. Many looking back at Cronkite from today see him as irredeemably conservative and somewhat reactionary, but his reporting, particularly on Vietnam, poverty, and race relations, was quite progressive and cutting edge for the era. Ultimately it was his biting commentary on the Vietnam War that exposed his true political leanings and which cemented his role as "America's most trusted journalist". His fearlessness in speaking truth to power regarding Vietnam led Lyndon Johnson to say "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the war." Skeptical and critical to the end Cronkite continued to probe and query the nature of power and its abuses to the end, doing so in a manner that was inquisitive yet not pointed. Yes, there are other admissions and items included here that will reveal Cronkite as unfailingly human and subject to the vices of his era. Nothing shocking there at all! The more important point that ultimately comes across about Cronkite is someone who moved with the times, who had an inquisitive mind and discerning heart, whose opinions were open to influence and suggestion, and who had considerable power and influence and yet decided not to trade on it or use it for their self-aggrandizement. It's a bit shocking to realize he's been off the air 30 years now and for younger readers it is nearly impossible to explain his relevance and importance to that era. In a society and an era that places no value on experience, expertise, or wisdom it's hard to imagine the emergence of another wizened talking head like Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Howard K. Smith, Harry Reasoner, or John Chancellor. We are lesser and weakened as a result. "Cronkite" is a glimpse into a different era that is unlikely to recur again. Well worth the time and effort!