David Brinkley [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

David Brinkley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 1995

He is an icon of the American airwaves, a face and voice we have been welcoming into our homes for the past half-century. Through times of great upheaval and interludes of business as usual, we have tuned in to David Brinkley's programs for his sense of fairness and his distinctive ability to cut through cant anti pretension.

Rich in anecdote and humor, David Brinkley tells a classic American story that overlaps with some of the great events and great personages of our era. In his unmistakable North Carolina cadences. David Brinkley relates his priceless moments, public and private, and takes aim at some of the things Americans love to hate. All from his own, uniquely Brinkley, vantage point.

David Brinkley was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and educated at the University of North Carolina and Vanderbilt University. He arrived in Washington in 1943 and worked at United Press before joining NBC News. In 1956, David Brinkley and Chet Huntley launched their celebrated news program, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, which won every major broadcasting award during its 14-year run. He then became co-anchor (with John Chancellor) on NBC Nighty News, and since 1981 has conducted his own program of news commentary and interviews, This Week With David Brinkley. He is the recipient of ten Emmy Awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Television newsman Brinkley's look back on his career spent 11 weeks on PW's bestseller list.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

He is an icon of the American airwaves, a face and voice we have been welcoming into our homes for the past half-century. Through times of great upheaval and interludes of business as usual, we have tuned in to David Brinkley's programs for his sense of fairness and his distinctive ability to cut through cant anti pretension.

Rich in anecdote and humor, David Brinkley tells a classic American story that overlaps with some of the great events and great personages of our era. In his unmistakable North Carolina cadences. David Brinkley relates his priceless moments, public and private, and takes aim at some of the things Americans love to hate. All from his own, uniquely Brinkley, vantage point.

David Brinkley was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and educated at the University of North Carolina and Vanderbilt University. He arrived in Washington in 1943 and worked at United Press before joining NBC News. In 1956, David Brinkley and Chet Huntley launched their celebrated news program, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, which won every major broadcasting award during its 14-year run. He then became co-anchor (with John Chancellor) on NBC Nighty News, and since 1981 has conducted his own program of news commentary and interviews, This Week With David Brinkley. He is the recipient of ten Emmy Awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Random House Audio (October 10, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679447814
• ISBN-13: 978-0679447818
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,836,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars David Brinkley, a rambling book, April 6, 2002

By 

Lewis F Townsend MD (Dunwoody, Georgia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: David Brinkley (Audio Cassette)

I was quite excited to get David Brinkley's book, as I have enjoyed his newscasts for years, particularly the early conventions. As it turns out, this is a "Chatty-Cathy" book that rambles on about his life, with his TV persona somewhat as an afterthought. The book is quite readable with his enjoyable laconic style, but at the end, you don't know much more about him, TV, the process of TV news, or the events to which he was an eyewitness....at least not more than you already knew or could surmise.
The book was a pleasant interlude, but somewhat a bit of froth

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Insightful but could have been more organized., June 30, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Indianapolis, Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: David Brinkley (Audio Cassette)

Brinkley gives the reader a lot of insight on how it was like to be one of the first people in broadcast journalism and he fills the book with rich anecdotes and humorous incidents that he got to cover. One such incident is that when he was covering the opening of Cape Canavaral in Florida the town of Cocca Beach grew so fast that a hotel owner expanded a hotel without even bothering to check to see if the additional land belonged to him. The actual owner of the land did not complain until the construction was finished and then he claimed the hotel to himself. Although Brinkley tries to go into a chronological order sometimes he skips back and forth between different time periods and this can be very confusing. As far as his content is concerned he includes a lot about various topics from the political conventions to the foreign policy issues that affected this nation (Vietnam and post World War II Europe). However the civil rights movement was a major part of the 1950's and 60's and since he is from the South I would have expected that he would have devoted an entire chapter to covering this tumultuous time in American history. Overall this book is worth reading.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Light and Entertaining Memoir of Old Style News Man, April 17, 2001

By 

Wayne A. Smith (Newark, DE) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: David Brinkley: A Memoir (Paperback)

To me, Brinkley always seemed a cut above the modern TV journalist / anchor -- more sober, more professional and less interested in focusing the attention on himself rather than his subject.

David Brinkley tells his life story in this quick book. Growing up with the new medium of television, he and his partner (Chet Huntly) wrote much of the playbook for the way network news and tv interview shows are conducted.

This is an interesting story that tells not only of Brinkley's growth and development but also of the maturation of the tv news industry. Along the way, Brinkley was witness to many seminal events and has of course met many of the notables of his era.

The man's integrity and dedication to the profession of journalism shines through in this book. I can't imagine Sam or Cokie or Dan or Peter writing this book. Too much would be devoted to image and the their impact on the news. Brinkley was able to achieve the incredible credibility he enjoyed because he was made of different stuff -- this is the story of a darn good journalist who understood the difference between covering the news and entering it.