Book Description

He has covered and analyzed nearly every major event of our time: the founding of NATO, the building of the Berlin Wall, the 1950s McCarthy hearings, and the 1990s Clinton impeachment hearings. As both a national and international eyewitness, Daniel Schorr has spent six decades fully engaged in world-watching.

After opening the CBS bureau in Moscow in 1955 and arranging an unprecedented television interview with Soviet boss Nikita Khrushchev, Daniel Schorr went on to a career often revered and sometimes reviled. His no-holds-barred approach to reporting won him three Emmys for his coverage of Watergate, and landed him on Nixon's "enemies list." In the 1970s, his refusal to name sources regarding CIA and FBI misdeeds led to his being threatened with jail for contempt by the House Ethics Committee. Always probing, Daniel Schorr continues in his quest for the truth as the senior news analyst for National Public Radio?.

This amazing autobiography not only details the life and times of the octogenarian newsman — the last of the legendary Edward R. Murrow news team still active in journalism — but also poses some important questions about the future of media.

Amazon.com

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

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.

From Booklist

Schorr's memoir is as much an inside look at the famous world figures of the latter half of the twentieth century as it is the story of one man's life and career. Indeed, with a 60-year career in newspapers, wire services, magazines, and broadcasting, most recently as a news analyst with National Public Radio, behind him, Schorr says he feels like "the recording secretary of my generation." He looks back to childhood poverty and feeling like an outsider, which feeling followed him into his chosen profession. His insider-outsider status triggered investigations by the KGB and FBI, conflicts with Bill Paley after 25 years at CBS and with Ted Turner after six years with CNN, and confrontations with a host of the powerful and political, including President Nixon. His memories include President Eisenhower's experimenting with press conferences and the irascible personality of Nikita Khrushchev. He recalls an era in journalism that has disappeared into the fast-paced, ever changing culture of today's news and information gathering with its sensationalism and emphasis on scandal.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Vanessa Bush

From Library Journal

Twenty-four years ago, Schorr published a memoir called Clearing the Air at the height of his journalistic fame. He had just left CBS News after three decades of international and domestic reporting. The spike in Schorr's fame came because he told the story behind a secret U.S. House of Representatives report on covert U.S. government operations in other nations, then refused to reveal to government officials how he obtained the report. Now, at age 85, Schorr covers much of the same ground as in the earlier book, adding about 50 pages of new material. The additions focus on Schorr's six years at Cable News Network, where he became the first prominent journalist hired by founding mogul Ted Turner. In the mid-1980s, Schorr left CNN because of a dispute over editorial independence, moving to a position as commentator on several National Public Radio news segments. Although journalists' memoirs are often pretentious and uninformative because of their outsider status, this memoir is neither. A useful addition to all journalism and politics collections.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Steve Weinberg, Univ. of Missouri Journalism Sch., Columbia

Synopsis

The legendary journalist recalls his distinguished career, from the golden age of broadcast news to the high-tech world of the twenty-first century, as he recounts his involvement in a variety of seminal historical events, including the rise of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, Watergate, and the rise of CNN. Reprint. 35,000

Book Dimension:

length: (cm)23.4 　　　 　　　　　　　 　 width:(cm)15.6