Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Bill Minutaglio (Author), W. Michael Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2009

She was a groomed for a gilded life in moneyed Houston, but Molly Ivins left the country club behind to become one of the most provocative, courageous, and influential journalists in American history. Presidents and senators called her for advice; her column ran in 400 newspapers; her books, starting with Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?, were bestsellers. But despite her fame, few people really knew her: what her background was, who influenced her, how her political views developed, or how many painful struggles she fought.

Molly Ivins is a comprehensive, definitive narrative biography, based on intimate knowledge of Molly, interviews with her family, friends, and colleagues, and access to a treasure trove of her personal papers. Written in a rollicking style, it is at once the saga of a powerful, pugnacious woman muscling her way to the top in a world dominated by men; a fascinating look behind the scenes of national media and politics; and a sobering account of the toll of addiction and cancer. Molly Ivins adds layers of depth and complexity to the story of an American legend—a woman who inspired people both to laughter and action.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Until her death in 2007, Molly Ivins was a staple of the op-ed page, aiming her arrow at favorite targets like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and the circus of Southern-particularly Texan-politics. The Texas daughter of an oil executive and major player in Houston society, Ivins enjoyed an early, privileged view of Texas deal making and the rise of modern Republicanism. Her subsequent career was a full-fledged rebellion, beginning with her father's conservatism, and culminating in a rejection of both "objective" (read: neutered) journalism and the oil-rich Republican machine. Ivins's insight couldn't be timelier, and the lines she crossed on behalf of women and journalists are overdue for celebration. She was also a fascinating and private person who charmed with her Southern character and was rumored to have had a number of high-profile affairs. An ideal investigation would get into these deep, dark corners, the way Ivins herself would have, but this biography is based on select personal papers and positive recollections, written by close admirers: Minutalglio is a Texas journalism professor, Smith was a long-time researcher for Ivins. Though they fail to explain what truly motivated Ivins's relentless crusade, or the deep tradition of American opposition behind her seemingly-anomalous Texas liberalism, this book should please fans and win Ivins new ones.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Douglas Brinkley
“God I miss Molly Ivins! The Texas kicker spoke truth to power like nobody’s business. Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith have elegantly bottled up her enduring charm in this winner of a book. A real page-turning hoot.”

Sir Harold Evans
“I was lucky enough to be the publisher of Molly Ivins’ iconoclastic, outrageously funny, laceratingly pointed political and social commentaries that made most male contemporaries—hello sweet pea—seem like shrinking violets, and I never knew the half of what made her tick so gloriously. The deeply researched biography by Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith, written with affection but unflinching candor, reveals a brave, resilient woman with a personality bigger than Texas whom hundreds of thousands of her readers, like me, will wish they’d known better.”

Library Journal
“Fans of Ivins's work and readers interested in feminist history, contemporary politics, and media studies will like this first full-length biography of Ivins.”

Newsweek
“Filled with first-rate analysis, leavened by plenty of local color.”

Dallas Morning News
“Entertaining, readable.... Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life is a sobering account of the toll of addiction and cancer, but it's also full of wonderful stories about a complex, brilliant woman who will be remembered for her trademark wit and down-home wisdom 

Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“An inside look at the world of journalism while describing in moving detail Ivins’ struggle with cancer.”

San Antonio News-Express
“For those who miss the wit and whip of Molly Ivins, the new biography of her life will make you laugh, cry, shudder and think.” 

Cleveland Plain Dealer
“This biography will be enjoyed…. It will help a new crop of readers discover an American original.”

Austin American-Statesman
“Poignant… personal, empathetic.”

Megan Garber, Columbia Journalism Review
“Meticulous…. A Rebel Life could easily have reduced Ivins’s life to a kind of ongoing dialectic: public persona versus private person, expectations versus here’s where you can put your expectations. It could have also devolved into a simple study of the journalist’s body of work. But thankfully, the authors resist reductive aesthetics in favor of something both more challenging and more rewarding: empathy. They provide a portrait of their subject that is loving in the most literal sense. They treat her simply as a person, with the attendant freight of ego and insecurity, strength and frailty… the biography is like its subject: unrelentingly honest, unapologetically filtered.”

Columbia Journalism Review
“Meticulous…. A Rebel Life could easily have reduced Ivins’s life to a kind of ongoing dialectic: public persona versus private person, expectations versus here’s where you can put your expectations. It could have also devolved into a simple study of the journalist’s body of work. But thankfully, the authors resist reductive aesthetics in favor of something both more challenging and more rewarding: empathy. They provide a portrait of their subject that is loving in the most literal sense. They treat her simply as a person, with the attendant freight of ego and insecurity, strength and frailty… the biography is like its subject: unrelentingly honest, unapologetically filtered”

Lloyd Grove,New York Times Book Review
“Minutaglio, the author of a well-received Bush biography, First Son, and Smith, who spent six years working for Ivins as a researcher and gofer, draw on voluminous private papers and interviews to produce a painfully intimate portrait . . . chockablock with colorful anecdotes and psychological insights”

Norman J. Glickman, Philadelphia Inquirer
“[Minutaglio & Smith] have vividly captured Ivins’ life—the bright and funny sides as well as the sad and dark…. People who read her columns or heard her on TV or NPR will find this a fascinating read. Those who didn’t know her work will be driven to her books…. [The authors] have painted a broad and deep picture of this national treasure. They have captured her public and private essences perfectly.”

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs (November 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586487175
• ASIN: B003R4ZBK0
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #329,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bill Minutaglio is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including biographies of President George W. Bush, Molly Ivins and Alberto Gonzales, and a narrative retelling of the greatest industrial disaster in American history. An anthology of his writing about race and injustice in America is entitled "In Search of The Blues: A Journey To The Soul of Black Texas."

His work has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Newsweek, Texas Monthly, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Outside and many other publications. His work has been featured, along with that of Ernest Hemingway, in Esquire's list of the greatest tales of survival ever written.

Reviewers have compared his work to that of Tom Wolfe, Herman Melville and Hunter Thompson. His work has been optioned by Tom Cruise, published in China and lauded by Oliver Stone. Among the writers who have offered praise on his book jackets: Buzz Bissinger, David Maraniss, Sir Harold Evans, Douglas Brinkley, Gail Sheehy, James Lee Burke and Mario Puzo.

He has won numerous awards for his writing, including recognition from The National Association of Black Journalists and The National Conference of Christians and Jews, which saluted his work in fighting prejudice.

His work has been called "excellent" by The New York Review of Books, New Republic and others. The NYTimes has called his work "fascinating." The San Francisco Chronicle has called his work on Bush Administration officials "chilling." The Texas Observer said his book "City On Fire" was one of the "finest books ever written about Texas."

"Minutaglio has long been regarded as one of the great writers in Texas journalism . . . he wrote exquisite long-form pieces about Texas poverty in a time of plenty"
The Austin American-Statesman

"Reading Bill Minutaglio is like listening to one of the great Texas blues legends. His reporting brings forth stories of suffering and resilience, while at the same time his dazzling writing evokes the brilliantly effusive guitar solos of masters like T-Bone Walker and Lightnin' Hopkins."
Steven L. Davis, Series Editor
Southwestern Writers Collection Book Series

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Only Regret? The Book Ended., December 13, 2009

By 

William Alexander "Alexander, Shaun" (Spartanburg, SC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life (Hardcover)

I have been a fan of Molly Ivins for years, and one of my great regrets is that breast cancer took away this remarkable, larger-than-life but still very humble journalist too early in this decade since so much of our contemporary politics and discourse would have been perfect - to put it bluntly - "Ivins Bait."

What surpised me the most, however, was how the authors, Minutaglio and Smith, both of whom knew the prolific and principled gadfly well, managed to put together not a posthumous love letter, but a surprisingly frank and layered portrait. Ivins came from a socially conservative background and attended some of the finest schools in the world, but one would never know. What emerges is an Ivins tormented, driven, brash, magnificently read, sometimes oddly shy, but always - always - funny and aecerbic as only she could be. As I mentioned, I have been a fan for years. But I knew nothing of the person. Now I do, and I am glad I came on for the ride. Something in everyone, I think, can appreciate a person who used her many journalism plaques and honors as table trivets, but had no fear of any power that would cloud the eyes of her readership and the United States she loved so passionately.

I also really appreciate how the authors took great pains to preserve Ms. Ivins' authentic "voice" as told through her reams of paper, even down to mundane shopping lists. Molly was, apparently, one of those people who could never bear to throw one scrap in the trash, and the work shows how the authors went through these papers with a meticulousness that allowed them to almost tell her story as she might have told it. I think she would have loved this book, and that's just about as high a mark as I can give any biography.

Just wonderful. Buy it, enjoy, and remember what Ms. Molly always said - "Get out there folks, and raise hell!"

Five stars, no reservation.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A light too soon extinguished, January 2, 2010

By 

Lyric "natri" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life (Hardcover)

Molly Ivins was a funny, incisive, brilliant observer of the American political landscape. Her years covering the Texas "lege" had given her a nose for smelling a skunk before it sprayed. She delighted her readers with her witty descriptions and analyses of politicians and their foibles. She called George W. Bush "Shrub" which perfectly described the less than brilliant son of the original Bush. She gave Texas Gov. Rick Perry the name "governor good hair" by which he is still known today.
Molly was an upcruster from a wealthy Republican family who was quick to see how "things worked" by observing her own father and his cronies as they wheeled and dealed in the Houston of the oil boom. She was smart, well-educated, spoke French, and could slide from an East Coast cultured voice into her downhome Texas twang when she needed to in order to get the story that she wanted.
Her life was not an easy one. It's never easy when a person realizes that their parents' life and social milieu and political positions totally conflict with ones own view of the world. She spent her life dealing with that confict. It took a toll emotionally and physically and psychologically BUT at the end of the day, she was a voice that spoke to a lot of people -- even the ones who didn't agree with her political views could never deny that she could get to the heart of an issue quickly and expose it and make it comprehensible to the reading public.
I miss Molly Ivins and reading this book which was written by two people who knew her well made me realize once again that when we lose a voice like hers, we lose a lot.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent accounting of a remarkable journalist, February 8, 2010

By 

Chris Boultinghouse "retired longtime journalist" (Mound City, MO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life (Hardcover)

Outstanding journalist and Texas legend Molly Ivins richly deserves this thorough reconstruction of her astounding career as a frontline news reporter and columnist.

A plodding style could make it difficult for non-fans to slog through the first few chapters about her family life in Houston in the 1950s and her college exploits in the early sixties. But Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith use massive research of her bountiful writings in newspapers and magazines from Texas to Minnesota to New York and back to Texas, interviewing Molly's many friends and co-workers along the way. Many of her longtime friends and fellow workers are as talented and famous as Molly was, so this is an especially appealing look at journalism to those of us who shared the profession from the late sixties through the first decade of the new century.

We had the good fortune to see Molly in a live college performance in Missouri late in her career and took to heart her autographed inscription in our copy of "Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?": "Y'all Raise more Hell!"Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?

Minutaglio and Smith apparently couldn't stand to leave out any of their research details, so it's a little repetitive in spots. But on a five-star scale, their effort gets four full stars -- a lot, even in Texas.
[[ASIN:B0032IKGT2 Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life (Hardcover)]