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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 921 BRINKLE | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
David Brinkley, icon of the American airwaves, has written his autobiography, a classic American story which overlaps with some of the great events and important personages of the era. From playing poker with Truman to riding the rails with Churchill to walking the beaches with D-Day veterans, readers are privy to some of Brinkley's most priceless remembrances. of photos.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Born in 1920 and raised in Wilmington, N.C., Brinkley began writing for the local paper in high school. He soon graduated to the United Press and, by WWII, was working for NBC Radio in Washington, D.C. It was there that he covered his first president, FDR (``a social snob''); was present at Churchill's famous ``Iron Curtain'' speech in 1946; and witnessed the miracle election of Truman in 1948. He slowly moved into TV and was paired with Chet Huntley at the 1956 political conventions. Their immediate chemistry led to the top-rated Huntley-Brinkley Report on the NBC Network. Brinkley reminisces about his friendship with Robert Kennedy; tells a hilarious story about how LBJ garnered votes from the cemetery; remembers how he first came across a ``rural tinhorn'' who went on to become Senator Jesse Helms; and recalls how it felt to be #1 on Nixon's enemies list. He also recounts how he left NBC and joined ABC to host This Week With David Brinkley. He gives his crusty opinion of both political parties: ``I find one to be about as bad as the other and both pretty bad.'' The only thing that mars this work is Brinkley's diatribe against taxes, which comes off as the ramblings of a grump. A thoughtful, breezy, anecdotal work. Photos. 150,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A modest, enjoyable, and minor memoir by a journalist who has seen much 20th-century history in the making. Brinkley, whose last book touched on his life as a young wartime correspondent (Washington Goes to War, 1988), writes winningly of his North Carolina boyhood; his first attempts as a writer, encouraged by kindly librarians and teachers; and the good luck and hard work that made him a national figure. He is long on memories of small incidents, less concerned with large events. Thus, in the place of portentous ``I was there'' analysis, we have Brinkley's charming account of a marathon poker game among leaders of state before Winston Churchill's famous Iron Curtain speech, in which Harry Truman instructed his staff to let the British stalwart come out ahead; in the place of bragging about scoops and discoveries, we have Brinkley's self-effacing recollections of missed stories, as when he ignored the efforts of an anticigarette group active decades before the surgeon general's report. The avuncular, sometimes exasperated tone that marks Brinkley's television persona carries over well into these pages. He turns in affectionate recollections of colleagues like John Cameron Swayze (who died last month), noting that Swayze never used a TelePrompTer and had ``an inoffensive down-home manner and style'' that swayed viewers to trust him as they would few other journalists. He gives backhanded compliments even to scoundrels``in Washington, a city already well supplied with your ordinary, everyday liars, nobody could lie like [Joseph] McCarthy,'' he remarks in passingand tells us that Richard Nixon could neither tell nor appreciate a joke. Brinkley's anecdotes, never earthshaking, give human scale to the big picture he has devoted his professional life to covering. (16 pages photos, not seen) (First printing of 150,000; Book-of- the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selections; author tour)
Library Journal Review
In 1967, NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley had long been out-rating CBS's Walter Cronkite with The Huntley-Brinkley Report. How that newscast went off the air only four years later is one of the more intriguing stories in Brinkley's memoirs. Now nearing retirement after almost a decade and a half moderating ABC's This Week with David Brinkley, Brinkley looks back on a career in print and broadcast journalism, including 38 years at NBC. Writing in his familiar clipped, witty voice, he highlights two themes: politics (especially the changing nature of televising political conventions) and the unpredictability of journalism and broadcasting. Particularly good are descriptions of his rise through the frontier years of television and anecdotes about figures such as Jesse Helms, Martin Luther King, and assorted Kennedys. Recommended for journalism and broadcasting collection and libraries owning his best seller, Washington Goes to War (LJ 4/1/88). [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/95.]Bruce Rosenstein, "USA Today" Lib., Arlington, Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
