Amazon.com Review
Long a familiar face to American television-news viewers, and more recently a familiar voice to public-radio listeners, Daniel Schorr recounts his 60-plus-year career covering some of the most significant events of the last century.
Schorr knew that he wanted to be a journalist from a very young age, though his mother worried about her son entering a profession that required no advanced degree. ("Isn't it a little like being an actor?" she asked, presciently, given the shape of modern broadcast news.) Schorr's narrative begins before the Second World War, when, the son of Russian immigrants, he combed the streets of New York looking for news stories and eventually talking his way onto the staffs of newspapers and wire services. He had a gift for being in the right place at the right time, breaking news in the summer of 1941 that pointed to an impending war with Japan and reporting on the hostilities that followed the creation of the state of Israel, among many other events. That gift served him well as he rose through the ranks of foreign correspondents, eventually joining CBS and heading the network's bureaus in Bonn and Moscow, where he came to spend more time talking with Nikita Khrushchev than he would spend with the American presidents he was later charged with covering. Schorr had another gift: a particularly fine ability to irritate those who came under his scrutiny, from John Wayne to John Kennedy, from the KGB to the FBI. "It may be that I am just hard to get along with, but to me it always seemed that some principle was involved."
Irascibility and high principle alike mark this memoir. Readers who grew up listening to Schorr's reports on such matters as Watergate and the Berlin Wall, as well as students of journalism and history, will find it illuminating. --Gregory McNamee
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Pick a major news event of the post-WWII era and chances are NPR commentator Schorr covered it. He was present at the inceptions of NATO, the Republic of Indonesia and the Berlin Wall. He conducted the first-ever TV interview with Khrushchev, arranged for himself and violinist Isaac Stern to take one of the first tours of Anne Frank's garret, and was Ted Turner's first hire for his fledgling Cable News Network in 1980, a position Schorr accepted after his principles got him into trouble at CBS. The son of Eastern European immigrants, Schorr never intended to become a broadcaster; he wanted to write for the New York Times. But a hiring freeze on Jewish correspondents put the kibosh on that dream, and once he joined the fabled team of CBS-TV reporters headed up by Edward R. Murrow, he never extracted himself from broadcast media. In this engaging, fascinating and often funny memoir, he alternates between offering an up-close-and-personal look at the more memorable events of the 20th century and sharing intimate stories about everyone from Shirley MacLaine to Richard Nixon (who included Schorr on his famous "enemies" list). Uncompromising and occasionally antagonistic, Schorr, like any good old-school journalist, is objective, even about himself. Indeed, the best description of him comes from former CBS boss Richard Salant: "He was not universally loved. But he was very good." Whether his book will be universally loved remains to be seen. But it's definitely very good. 16-pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. (May 8)Forecast: Well-known to TV viewers and NPR audiences, Schorr should get major media attention when he tours N.Y. and D.C., and, engaging as this book is, with a first printing of 35,000, it may even flirt with the bestseller lists.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
