Talking Back: ...to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels [Hardcover]

Andrea Mitchell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2005

Andrea Mitchell started her pathbreaking career as the quintessential girl reporter and quickly became one of the first women in broadcast news. She’s been labeled a “pushy broad,” yet her intelligence, tenacity, and ability to always be “where the action is” have catapulted her to the top of her profession. As one of America’s most watched correspondents, Mitchell has regularly shared her observations with millions of television viewers for more than three decades.

Time and again, Mitchell has proven herself by taking on the tough assignments— starting with her first posting abroad in Guyana after the previous NBC correspondent had been murdered by Jim Jones’s henchmen. She has had unique access to all the presidents and their staffs from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, and here gives us her unvarnished insights into these men and those who surround them. Whether it was revealing that Ronald Reagan’s napping caused the delay of a space shuttle landing, conducting exclusive interviews with Fidel Castro, or accompanying Condoleezza Rice on her first trip abroad as secretary of state, she is known as the one to beat to the story.

But what sets this book apart is not only the unique front-row seat Mitchell has in the political world, but also the role she plays in the glamorous social scene in Washington. Her marriage to Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, has created professional challenges, but also given her special entrée to the “A” list drawing rooms of Washington and other capitals. Here she gives us glimpses of what it’s like to go from a 7 p.m. newscast to an 8 p.m. black-tie party, to go from being the reporter staking out a state dinner to being one of the invited guests.

Smart and candidly written, Mitchell’s memoir will be a must read for anyone interested in politics and current affairs and will also fascinate anyone who wonders what it’s like to be a powerful woman in a man’s world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Millions of TV viewers may feel they already know Mitchell—she has reported on politics for NBC for some 30 years and is married to the Fed's Alan Greenspan—but there's lots to learn about her in this engrossing memoir. Mitchell began as a "copyboy" at radio station KYW in Philadelphia in the 1970s. After covering the major political conventions for them, she was hired by NBC and headed to Washington. Shortly after, she flew to Guyana for her first major story: the 1978 Jonestown massacre. She has covered all the presidents from Carter through George W. Bush, done exclusives with Castro, sat in on high-level negotiations in the Middle East and North Korea, and much more. Mitchell's tales are fascinating, but her evolution as a journalist is even more intriguing. She was a gender pioneer, for example, but her gender rapidly became a nonissue. Yet her original insistence on a clear separation of work and social life seems progressively undercut by her own account. She mentions many dinners with dear friends like the Cheneys, and parties with the Bushes, Rice and Rumsfeld, and then wonders why the media got the Iraq WMD question so wrong. Still, this is a treat for political junkies.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Mitchell, who began her long career as a television reporter at a time when women were severely restricted, gained respect as she faced down a range of powerful figures from Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo to Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In this absorbing memoir, Mitchell recalls her climb to the top of her profession, including stints at NBC Nightly News, Today, and Meet the Press. Mitchell recalls encounters with major figures, from bullying by Don Regan to the kindness of President Reagan even as he was being heavily scrutinized for Iran-Contra. She offers a behind-the-scenes look at powerful Washington politicos, including her husband, Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan. Mitchell also offers a personal glimpse into her life, weighing the personal access that her relationship with Greenspan gave her to powerful figures against worries about her journalistic independence. This is a frank and revealing book by a respected journalist whose career spans three decades. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (September 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670034037
• ISBN-13: 978-0670034031
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #765,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Another Calendar, October 2, 2005

By 

Hirschel S. Adler (Irvine, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Talking Back: ...to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels (Hardcover)

Having heard Andrea Mitchell discuss this book on the radio, I set aside a few other books to read it as her work experience and my interests are a perfect match. Sadly, autobiographical books can provide dramatic and interetsing insights or they can simply be a calendar of events. Ms. Mitchell's book is a calendar of events.

What may work on television in sixty second tidbits does not work for her in this book. She offers no insights, only a listing of events. The classic example is her meeting with King Faisal's daughter after a dinner when the King's daughter offers to bring in a few "draping veils" so that her guests could see what it was like to wear one. Ms. Mitchell tells the reader of the event, but takes not a moment to inform the reader of the conversation that took place with the daughter while and after they were trying the veils on and thereafter. That conversation and insights therefrom are what I look for in a book such as this one.

The book could be a decent read to someone who is unfamiliar with the period or unread about the events of the past twenty or so years or to someone that likes to read a calendar with an occasional, yet undisciplined and unsupported "shot" at the Republicans.

If you have read President Clinton's My Life, not itself a spellbinder, there is nothing in this book that will not be a reprise.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Analytical Eye Cast Backwards, August 10, 2006

By 

Bart King (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Talking Back: ...to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels (Hardcover)

I began taking interest in Andrea Mitchell's reportage because of her hard-boiled demeanor on Don Imus's late radio program. Unflappable, funny, and professional, these appearances were enough to lure me to her "behind-the-scenes memoir." And I'm not sorry to have read it. Mitchell may be "just" a TV journalist, but she is a strong writer and a keen analyst.

Perhaps the best part of TALKING BACK is its review of the last few decades of world and national events that it provides. Mitchell's after-the-fact analysis on the news that she has already covered gives the material a refreshing and even educational new angle. Revisiting these stories is interesting; for example, I had forgotten how horrible and divisive the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings were.

To be sure, there are some problems with the book. Reading about her attendance as a guest at White House soirée after soirée made me wonder about her objectivity. Mitchell is perhaps overly coy about her own life as well. After 400-odd pages, I found no reference to her birth year, and her marriage with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is never described as being much deeper than "he is my biggest fan."

SIDELIGHT: My favorite mixed metaphor from the book: "It seemed tailor-made for someone who had cut her teeth covering Frank Rizzo."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A ....."different" kind of memoir, August 6, 2006

By 

OppEd (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talking Back: ...to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels (Hardcover)

Many of this book's reviews complain that Mitchell's autobiography is more history than memoir. That's totally true, but here's why I think she can get away with it--almost:

Andrea Mitchell is a journalist. Unlike many journalists now who love BEING the news instead of REPORTING the news, Mitchell maintains the highest journalistic standards and I think her book shows that. Unfortunately, it makes for pretty terrible autobiographical writing. The reason she can almost get away with it is because her bad autobiography shows in the most obvious way what a great journalist she is! Let me put it another way: Mitchell's trouble writing about herself shows how ingrained the sense objectivity is in her (not that any writing is ever purely objective, but I digress.)

As someone born in 1981, I honestly enjoyed Mitchell's history of what made the news since the sixties--it's pretty interesting and well-written. I guess the problem is that I bought a book about Andrea Mitchell, not history. The sense of self-censorship really overpowers the book; Mitchell is ridiculously guarded. She's insightful about everything except herself!

In the end, I had fun reading her "memoir" and I think her difficulty writing about herself actually does reveal a lot about her. I think also that it might have behooved her to wait until retiremement--or whatever her version of retirment will be--to write her memoir. Maybe she'll give it another shot, and we'll see a more revealed Mitchell.

But hey, I liked it anyway.