Customer Reviews

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

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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."

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.

And people who are expecting a tell-all, fully detailed account of Andrea's life had better look elsewhere. This book is about her rise into the national broadcasting media. (If people want a detailed account they should read Magdaleine Albright's book "Madame Secretary.") This is not a book revealing every secret, ever detail of every person she interviewed or her feelings of all the events she covered. She's more "Just the facts, Sir" type of writer.

Now, with that out of the way, this is an easy-to-follow chronology of events as Andrea Mitchell saw them starting her days as a Philadelphia reporter for KYW and then the Jonestown massacre in late 1978. But it was later with Three Mile Island in March 1979, her first national exposure as an energy correspondent that brought her to the forefront as an aggressive reporter. It was a line on page 46 that summed up Andrea's personality, when she wanted to be there to cover the Three Mile Island melt-down but was denied her chance to report because her supervisor, an elderly and paternal Sid Davis didn't want Andrea, as a woman of child-bearing age, be exposed to potential nuclear radiation: "Men's testicles were as vulnerable to radiation as women's ovaries. I was on a plane to Three Mile Island the next day."

She was there for the rise of Ayatollah. She spoke well of Reagan as a gentleman, but also reported on his often-noticed fatigue, disorientation and his lack of detail which he delegated to his advisors. She was much less forgiving of Reagan's Chief of Staff, Don Regan.

Had Mitchell written with greater detail there's no doubt that this book would have required many more pages. One thing I can fault her with is not revealing much about her personal life and how her profession often dictated her personal life. She was very careful not to reveal too much about her early years with her now-husband Allan Greenspan.

The Paperback edition also provides additional reporting since the hardback book was published, which gives Condoleeza Rice much credit for her stance in the Middle East.

I will agree with Bill O'Reiley when he described Andrea Mitchell as one of the more non-partisan reporters. This book reflects that.

If you enjoy a mix of autobiography, history and current events, this book will delight you. Andrea Mitchell covers the American scene through the eyes of a journalist who, as husband of Allen Greenspan, was, at times, participant. Fair and balanced. Goes well with a shade tree and glass of lemonade.

Too long by at least a third. Like many TV reporters, Mitchell is a bit too impressed by where she's been and who she's interviewed. We don't get enough about her and what she went through as a woman breaking in. The biggest flaw is it reads too much like a popular history of recent events. We already know the facts. What we want is what they meant to Mitchell, but she just drones on, putting fact after fact. That's probably because she's still a working reporter and doesn't want to risk offending anyone she might have to work with. Another explanation is her husband, Alan Greenspan. Saying nasty things about politicians could boomerang for the couple who are among Washington's social elite. Overall, worth a skim.

Andrea Mitchell is journalism's equivalent of Woody Allen's "Zelig" -- every time something big happens...she is there. This book is packed with the inside story of lots of stories. She tells about the hard work that got her to the top of broadcast journalism. Unlike some of the young reporters populating the cable news networks these days -- she clearly got where she is by the dint of her energy and smarts. This book should be required reading in journalism schools around the country.

This is kind of two books in one that match Ms. Mitchell's two roles in life.

On the one hand, she is an accomplished newscaster having worked for NBC news for thirty odd years. In that capacity she has mostly worked the Washington scene, close to presidents and world events. In her second role she is Mrs. Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve.

In her first role she is standing outside the door with the other reporters waiting for the feature players to step outside and issue the news statements. In her second role she is an invited guest to the dinner party where the feature players are discussing what is to be included in the news statement.

In this book she is describing how she got there from a start in New Rochelle, New York. Like a lot of super successful people, she knew from early childhood what she wanted to do. She began her career in journalism as a school reporter for her elementary school. How she got from there to covering the White House makes for an interesting story.

As a professional journalist, her writing skills lift this book from the usual autobiography.

As a fan of her MSNBC show as well as appreciating the fact that she puts the stories first as opposed to herself like most MSNBC personalities (this would be Mr. Matthews, Schultz, and Olbermann), I decided to purchase this book.

There's nothing here that keeps you riveted on a page by page basis. If you are a history junkie like I am, then you would find some of the behind the scenes stuff pretty interesting. She talks about her early days covering the mayor of Philadelphia and she eventually gets to the NBC network and eventually covers the White House, Capitol Hill, and then becomes the Foreign Correspondent. Anytime you make your living in Washington, there is something always fun going on and she lets us know about it. Other than Fidel Castro, I'm not sure how much "talking Back" there is which is what I was expecting but it is still a worthwhile book.

This book is thoroughly engrossing. I had always noticed Andrea Mitchell and admired her reporting, thought she was extremely articulate as well as nice-looking. I knew she married Alan Greenspan. 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 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 high 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%.