Customer Reviews

Talking Back: ...to Presidents, Dictators, and Other Scoundrels

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This 5-CD, 6-hour book, read by the author, is a thoroughly engrossing. I had always noticed Andrea Mitchell and admired her reporting. [...]I was open to finding out what it takes to be so tough-minded that enabled her to rise in her industry and spontaneously ask the tough questions of powerful people all over the world. But this book took me by surprise.

Andrea Mitchell, reading her own book, is fast-paced and yet so well organized that she is very easy to follow. She expresses complex thoughts that put into perspective decades of our history, as she explains her role and presence at one significant event after another. In some ways this book is a description of how to succeed in a journalist career reporting on TV, and in other ways this is a history book, describing fairly the times in which we have lived. Andrea impressed me for being able to be so fast-paced and fair-minded. She reveals herself to be extraordinarily bright and tough, and seems to have dedicated herself to her profession to the extreme.

Accounts of each of the presidents she covered, and there were many, are insightful. She does a great imitation of Ronald Reagan and has interesting stories about each president. She has very complimentary things to say about each president as well as bitingly critical points. I think she treated George W. Bush differently than all the other presidents, as I waited but did not hear any positive points. Possibly the absence of even one compliment spoke volumes and possibly she was simply avoiding controversy. This was a mystery that hung at the end of the book without resolution.

Surprisingly, Talking Back made me like Alan Greenspan, a very difficult man to understand even after reading his Age of Turbulence. The fact that he became committed and married to such a strong woman speaks very well for him. Andrea addressed aspects of their relationship while maintaining a fair degree of privacy, but it's worth getting this front row seat to the tough reporter's view of fitting into America's aristocracy. Plainly, this tough reporter married into the top social strata of America. She cites occasions with friends of the couple, such as Al and Tipper Gore, Dick and Lynne Cheney as well as many other rich and powerful friends. Other than some fellow reporters, the word "friend" was exclusively reserved for people of top socio-economic status. I would have liked an explanation of the friendship with the Cheneys, but Andrea provided none.

The title of the book seemed a bit of a misnomer until Andrea described her visits to Cuba and interviews with Fidel Castro. I admired her for being so fair, diplomatic and yet not holding back on essential issues. I felt she represented America very well whenever she interviewed foreign leaders. It was clear that Andrea knows a lot more about many things that just about anybody I know, and her book is an authentic teaching document. For that, I am appreciative and recommend this entertaining book 100%.