100 books every journalist must read
52 McGs, Robert McG. Thomas Jr.
As newspapers squeeze back their pages, staff-written obituaries are more and more reserved for those already famous. And they seem in many cases to be considered too old-fashioned for online (or at least too time-consuming to prepare). The first thing is bad because the obit, in the right hands, is the newspaper’s last chance to make up for neglecting interesting people in its community. The second thing is dumb because obits actually do well online. So read this collection of obituaries written for the New York Times and maybe you’ll help reverse those trends.
Other voice: Michael T. Kaufman, New York Times (writing Thomas’s obituary). “Always regarded as a stylish writer by his colleagues, he sometimes ran into career turbulence because of an acknowledged tendency to carry things like sentences, paragraphs, ideas and enthusiasms further than at least some editors preferred. Indeed, he went beyond acknowledging this trait to defending it. ‘Of course I go too far,’ he used to say. ‘But unless you go too far how are you ever going to find out how far you can go?’ ”
Anton Rosenberg, a storied sometime artist and occasional musician who embodied the Greenwich Village hipster ideal of the 1940s cool to such a laid-back degree and with such determined detachment that he never amounted to much of anything, died on Feb. 14.
The First Casualty, Phillip Knightley
The story of war reporting, from the Crimea through Afghanistan (thanks to post-2000 updates). This is a history, not a collection of war reporting. Knightley is such a good storyteller that I wore out my first copy of this book from rereading — and I never had any urge to cover war. In these pages you will see the absurdities and incompetence that Evelyn Waugh parodied in “Scoop,” but also the bravery and humanity that make war reporting one of journalism’s highest achievements. Some of the books on this list are there because they’re my personal favorites; some, because they cover a topic more comprehensively than anything else; still others, because everyone else seems to think they’re journalism classics. “The First Casualty” is all three.
Other voice: Clinton B. Conger, Central Intelligence Agency (honest, the CIA does book reviews. Who knew?). “In regard to both censorship and propaganda — the two subjects which bring this book into the intelligence purview — he ignores important distinctions.
“Firstly, no accredited war correspondent has any right to expect, let alone demand, that he be allowed in wartime to acquire and publish information unknown to the enemy which will aid the enemy. Where there is mismanagement, bumbling, or failure, and it is already known to the enemy or of no use to the enemy, however, censorship stands on shaky ground in pleading ‘home front morale’ and ‘comfort to the enemy.’ If Knightley is aware of this distinction he never makes it.
“Secondly, with regard to propaganda, the best role for the correspondent and that which best serves the truth is objectivity. Herbert Matthews admits that in Spain he went overboard in his bias in favor of the side he covered — the Republicans. Similar advocacy journalism reached its peak in Southeast Asia with those correspondents who were working from the South Vietnamese side but were critical of everything the South Vietnamese undertook. In these two examples, there is one sharp difference: the pro-Republican correspondents in Spain wrote at length about atrocities perpetrated by the opposing Franco side, but ignored those on their own side; in Vietnam there was quick, lurid, and widespread reporting of alleged South Vietnamese atrocities, but very little about those committed by the Communist forces.”
The My Lai massacre was revealed because it was written not by a war correspondent on the spot, but by a reporter back in the United States who was capable of being shocked by it, and because he wrote the story at a moment when … the American public was prepared to read, believe, and accept it.
Floater, Calvin Trillin
The best, or at least funniest, novels about journalists’ lives seem to come from England. I don’t know whether that’s because English journalism is by its nature riper for parody (hard to believe) or because American journalists find it more difficult to achieve the emotional distance required to find humor rather than despair in their plight. In any case, “Floater” is a possible exception to the rule: an actually funny American novel about journalism. Trillin’s plot, such as it is, takes place at a newsweekly very much like the Time magazine the author really did work at through 1963. The central character is a “floater,” a writer who moves from section to section as needed rather than specializing in a particular topic.
Other voice: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times. “Trillin’s good-natured satire hits a number of targets — among them, religion, politics, environmentalists, the book-publishing industry, the dining habits of book editors, office politics, office sex and California. Not least among these targets, naturally enough, are newsmagazines that take it for granted that their internal goings on are ‘more important than the events the magazine wrote about.’ ”
He began putting ‘alleged’ in front of any religious event whose historical authenticity was at all in question—writing about the ‘alleged discovery of Moses in the bullrushes’ or ‘the alleged resurrection of Jesus Christ.’ The senior editor for the section, Ed Winstead, simply crossed out ‘alleged’ wherever he found it, without comment.
Follow the Story, James B. Stewart
Just about everyone else I consulted who recommended a book about writing the narrative or long-form feature recommended Jon Franklin’s book (also on my list). But I consider “Follow the Story” clearer, better written and more useful. And this is my list. Stewart, another Wall Street Journal alum, has written several classic books about business — “Den of Thieves,” “DisneyWar” — and other topics. As an editor, I found that the structuring of longer articles was the most common stumbling block for reporters. “Follow the Story” was my go-to resource to help them through the difficulties.
Other voice: Luke Mullin, The Washingtonian. “It’s less about the mechanics of a sentence, more about overall structuring, emphasis on building the reader’s curiosity and driving them through the narrative. The book is great—I should probably read it again.”
I often found myself locked in arguments with editors for whom the nut graf had become more important than the story. They always wanted to move the ‘good’ material, the ‘news,’ as they often called it, from deep in the story into the nut grafs, without regard to the story’s overall structure or even chronological order.
Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger
The reason that one season of football by one high school team in Texas could lead to a book, a movie and a TV show — all thrilling and popular — is that there’s a great story inside. In point of fact, there are great stories inside lots of high school football teams, and high school plays, and all sorts of other everyday things. The only reason those great stories aren’t told is that Buzz Bissinger didn’t get to them. Time has shown that Bissinger the man is not one to emulate, but the author of this book is an excellent role model.
Other voice: Sports Illustrated (naming it the No. 4 sports book of all time). “As Permian High grows into a dynasty, the locals’ sense of proportion blows away like a tumbleweed. A brilliant look at how Friday-night lights can lead a town into darkness.”
Jerrod had done everything it took to become a starter for the Permian football team. … He worked tirelessly in the weight room, his red cheeks bulging and his body vibrating. … In return there was a fantastic, visceral payoff — a single season of his life in which he became a prince, ogled at, treasured, bathed in the unimaginable glory of Friday night.
The Functional Art, Alberto Cairo
While Edward R. Tufte (see his “Visual Display of Quantitative Information” below) is my gold standard for informational graphics, some of my colleagues have been most influenced by Alberto Cairo. He has the advantage of coming at the subject as a journalist himself. He created the infographics department at El Mundo in Spain and has consulted with many other publications as well as having extensive classroom experience. Like Tufte, he argues ardently for graphics that inform rather than merely entertain. With the increasing popularity of data-driven journalism, individual journalists must learn how to communicate what the data show visually as well as verbally. In addition to laying out his principles, Cairo profiles many practitioners and explains their work.
Other voice: Laura Noren, The Society Pages. “The book does a great job of explaining the decision making behind graphic design. The sketches, process drawings, and recounts of the conversations that went on in editorial meetings gave important depth of context.”
Graphics, charts, and maps aren’t just tools to be seen, but to be read and scrutinized. The first goal of an infographic is not to be beautiful just for the sake of eye appeal, but, above all, to be understandable first, and beautiful after that; or to be beautiful thanks to its exquisite functionality.
Gideon’s Trumpet, Anthony Lewis
There are few examples of book-length journalism here; few journalists can expect to have so large a canvas. Anthony Lewis was no ordinary talent. He essentially invented Supreme Court reporting with his ability to slice to the heart of a decision and explain it — explain it far better than the justices themselves. This is the story of Clarence Gideon and Gideon v. Wainwright, in which the right to counsel for the indigent was established. A later book, “Make No Law,” on a 1964 ruling that changed libel law forever, is more relevant to journalists. “Gideon’s Trumpet” is here instead because he pumped it out in the four months of a New York newspaper strike, and because it reminds all of us that even Supreme Court rulings are, in the end, about real people.
Other voice: Emily Bazelon, Slate. “For me, Lewis’ book, along with Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas, were reasons to become a legal journalist: examples of storytelling and lucid explanation I couldn’t imagine matching but could always aspire to.”
Gideon was a fifty-one-year-old white man who had been in and out of prisons much of his life. He had served time for four previous felonies, and he bore the physical marks of a destitute life: a wrinkled, prematurely aged face, a voice and hands that trembled, a frail body, white hair. … Those who had known him, even the men who had arrested him and those who were now his jailers, considered Gideon a perfectly harmless human being, rather likeable, but one tossed aside by life. … And yet a flame still burned in Clarence Earl Gideon. He had not given up caring about life or freedom; he had not lost his sense of injustice. Right now he had a passionate — some thought almost irrational — feeling of having been wronged by the State of Florida, and he had the determination to try to do something about it.
The Good Guys, the Bad Guys and the First Amendment, Fred Friendly
There was a time in America when broadcasters were obligated by government edict to provide fair coverage of controversial issues. There was a thing called the Fairness Doctrine, which would have hobbled the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, not to mention the unholy hordes of their imitators and outdoers. The doctrine was killed by the Reagan administration in 1987. Friendly’s book, written more than a decade earlier, covers the events that led to the doctrine’s imposition in 1949 and the battles over it that followed. It’s sad, today, to remember that once there was a time when the airwaves were relatively civil. The Internet would have put paid to that eventually, but a few more years of sanity would have been nice.
Other voice: Ben C. Fisher, Hofstra Law Review. “The book makes delightful reading and will appeal to the serious student of communications policy as well as to members of the general public concerned with first amendment matters.”
[Billy James] Hargis attacked Fred Cook as ‘a professional mudslinger,’ and accused him of dishonesty, of falsifying stories and of defending Alger Hiss. … The Hargis attack lasted less than two minutes. The air time for the entire fifteen minutes cost $7.50 — plus more than a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees and costs.
Find in my store (Kindle) | Find on Biblio.com
Good Times, Bad Times, Harold Evans
Harold Evans, crusading editor of the Times of London, was tapped to edit the Sunday Times when Rupert Murdoch bought the papers. Murdoch made solid promises that the paper would have editorial freedom. Does it shock you to learn that he reneged? No? But then, you have the benefit of knowing Murdoch would go on to stomp all over other media properties and to create the rampaging rage demon that is the Fox News Channel. Evans (who has also written an autobiography, “My Paper Chase,” that covers a much broader era) writes elegantly about the journalism that his reporters pursued and the back-room business that chased him away.
Other voice: Harold Evans himself, in the foreword to the latest edition. “The experiences I describe in Good Times, Bad Times have turned out to be eerily emblematic. The dark and vengeful undertow I sensed and then experienced in the last weeks of my relationship with Murdoch correctly reflected something morally out of joint with the way he ran his company. In the decades that followed my year at the Times, the inside rot was matched only by the menace that came to represent to the civil discourse and the whole political establishment. Prime ministers, Tory and Labour alike, were so scared of blackmail by headline they gave him whatever he asked.”
I did not have a settled view of the designated tenth proprietor of The Times. … I heard every jolly swagman’s yarn which placed him somewhere between Ned Kelly and Citizen Kane. … But the image I formed wobbled.
Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, Ken Auletta
Technically, Google is not a media company. So why is it on this list? Because whatever Google is, it’s changed the way media operate, and does a little more of that each time it introduces a new online product or merely tweaks its search algorithm. Of all the Google-explaining books around, Auletta’s is most relevant because a major focus is Google’s impact on the news media.
Other voice: John Lanchester, The Guardian. “Google has grown so big and so powerful that the moment for simple gee-whizzery is past. Ken Auletta, one of America’s best business journalists, has turned his attention on the firm, with particular reference to the challenges it faces. Many of these bear on the tension between the company’s good intentions and the actual consequences of what it does.”
When a question is typed into the Google search box, the task is to divine the searcher’s intention: when you wrote ‘Jobs’ in the query box, did you mean employment or Steve Jobs? The query may produced thousands of links, but the promise of Google … is that the ones that appear near the top of the search results will be more relevant to you. … By mapping how many people click on a link, or found it interesting enough to link to, Google determines whether the link is ‘relevant’ and assigns it a value. This quantified value is known as PageRank, after Larry Page.
I’d add “The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune,” by Richard Kluger. The Trib was the great newspaper of the mid-’60s, with an oversized impact on our notions of quality — and effective — journalism. Too bad the numbers didn’t add up.
Thanks for commenting, Ed. I do have Jim Bellows’ book on the list, which includes his take as editor of the Trib. And Stanley Walker’s City Editor.
Some good books here, but some glaring omissions that I didn’t immediately find: Hiroshima by John Hersey, The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn, A Bright, Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan. Something from Richard Harding Davis and Stephen Crane.
Good choices, Chris. I decided I covered Harding Davis with The First Casualty, and I think I remember him being in the Treasury of Great Reporting. I was a bit concerned about over-representing war reporting.
“Precision Journalism”, by Phil Meyer. This 1972 book launched the idea that reporters should use social science methods like polling and statistical analysis, and led to the widespread adoption today of data journalism in newsrooms around the world.
Thanks for the suggestion, Steve. I read that back in journalism school when I considered applying my computer science minor to a newsroom job. I went with the Data Journalism Handbook for the list, but you’re right, Meyer’s book launched the era of data journalism.
I agree about omitting Gellhorn.
Of your 100, only 18 are written or edited or about women. This seems unbalanced to me, given the preponderance of women in this industry, Nellie Bly onward. How about Marguerite Higgins?
Or the extraordinarily brave war reporter Marie Colvin or Janine Giovanni?
http://www.amazon.com/On-Front-Line-Collected-Journalism/dp/0007487967
I did the same count you did, Caitlin. It’s a concern. Some of the collections that are edited by men do, however, include women as contributors, so it’s not as lopsided as the count suggests. I considered adding a collection devoted solely to female journalists — the one already on my shelves is “Brilliant Bylines” by Barbara Belford, which includes short biographies. I wondered, though, if that might seem tokenism.
I would add my Ohio Wesleyan journalism professor’s book – Edwards, Verne. 1970. Journalism in a Free Society, Wm. C. Brown Co. Publishers.
I add the Journalist Code I once read – “If your Mother says she loves you, check it out.”
Thanks, Ann. That quote, by the way, comes from the (former) City News Bureau of Chicago (says this Chicago kid).
I’d certainly rethink In Cold Blood, given later information on how Capote cooked some of it. Ditto All the President’s Men, which played a little loose with narrative fact as a way to tee up the movie deal. And some of those j-school textbooks are by people who never wrote more than a memo or a term paper in their lives? No way do they belong. And lots of those books on this list are woefully out of date.
It Happened One Night, the Titanic book, deserves a mention. It was very early quality non-fiction narrative. And doesn’t anyone even remember Psmith: Journalist by Wodehouse, a classic in the genre?
James, I’m not sure who you’re referring to regarding the textbook authors. I explain my decisions regarding In Cold Blood and all the President’s Men in the list: Knowing those books, it seems to me, is essential to understand their impact on the craft.
I would add:
“Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties” – collects much of Esquire’s landmark journalism from that decade by Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and others.
“America: What Went Wrong?” by Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele – the only book I can think of that became an issue in a presidential campaign, in 1992, over its analysis of how the American middle class was losing out. (The same authors revisited that theme a couple of years ago in “The Betrayal of the American Dream.”)
“The Selling of the President 1968” by Joe McGinniss – the first book to look behind how candidates are packaged and marketed, as they’ve been ever since.
“What Liberal Media?” by Eric Alterman – the first book that really pushed back against the conservative meme that “the media are all liberals.”
Anything by Roger Angell, whose New Yorker reporting on baseball is unparalleled.
Michael, thanks for commenting. Esquire writers are already well represented on the list — not counting Mailer, who’s not one of my favorites. I admire Bartlett and Steele, but I couldn’t find a place for them on the list; worth thinking about again.
I’d have to add William Shirer’s Berlin Diary. He was in the belly of the beast, reporting on Hitler’s rise to power — he even accompanied the Wehrmacht on their drive into France — and then he joined Murrow in the early days of radio news. And his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich showed that some journalists do recognize the need to go back and do a much deeper version of their initial reporting.
Hmm. I recently reread Shirer’s Rise and Fall and was put off by his homophobia.
Give Berlin Diary a try. It’s “pre-history” in that while we know what all of this means and how it will turn out, Shirer doesn’t, so you get a great sense of how difficult it was for journalists on the scene and everyone else to understand where Hitler was headed.
What’s missing from Berlin Diary are the actual stories Shirer wrote. He’s there at all of the major Nazi rallies, at every step in Hitler’s rise to power, he repeatedly describes the look on Hitler’s face as he is standing a few yards away, but he has to deal with Goebbels and the censors, so while we read what he is thinking, we don’t know what he is telling his readers. He’s aware that Jews are in trouble and trying to get out of Europe, but you don’t know if he ever wrote about, e.g. He eventually leaves, a year before Pearl Harbor, in part because he realizes he can’t tell his readers what is happening (and in part because he fears the Germans are about to arrest him as a spy).
Thanks for a heroic achievement in concocting this list. I haven’t had the time to truly digest, analyze, contemplate specific trade-offs, etc., but off the top here are some things I would have considered.
Edmund Wilson, “The American Earthquake.” Remarkable reporting and writing about the 1920s and 30s Saturation reporting and New Journalism decades before they came into fashion.
“Speaking of Journalism,” ed. William Zinsser. Corby Kummer’s relatively brief piece “Editors and Writers” is one of the single best things I’ve ever read on the craft of editing, a much tougher topic to talk about than how to write well.
Norman Mailer, “Miami and the Siege of Chicago.” You don’t like Mailer? Tough. Too influential and important to ignore. This is his best non-fiction.
Joan Diddion, “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.” (anthology)
Nan Robertson, “The Girls in the Balcony.” History of discrimination against women at the NYT.
Kenneth Tynan, “Profiles.” Master of the form.
Jack Newfield, “The Education of Jack Newfield”
“The New Journalism,” ed. Tom Wolfe; “The Literary Journalists,” ed. Norman Sims. Two fine anthologies. Repeats stuff on your list but worth owning.
“The Reporter as Artist: A Look at the New Journalism Controversy,” ed. Ronald Weber. Fantastic overview, valuable not only for examples of personal journalism but for discussions, critiques, interviews and dissents.
John Reed, “10 Days that Shook the World.” Classic all the way around.
Seymour Krim, “Missing a Beat.,” ed. Mark Cohen. A highly influential and original voice growing out of the beat generation who was already forgotten by his death in 1989. This is a recent anthology but I’d encourage folks to scour used book stores for Krim’s own collections like “Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer,” “Shake it For the World, Smartass,” etc.
Ralph Ellison, “Shadow and Act.” OK – Ellison’s essays aren’t conventional reporting, but no book will teach you more about the American experience, culture and race and therefore no book is more important for those who need to understand American culture, which is to say journalists.
Roger Angell, “Game Time.” An A+ anthology by the best baseball writer ever. Period. Full Stop. (Coda: Tom Boswell of the Washington Post is equally great on baseball and golf and it’s worth looking for his collections “How Life Imitates the World Series,” “Strokes of Genius” and “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.”
Solid choices, Mark. Thanks.
The “old editor” was right when he recommended the Bible and Shakespeare. Whether you’re an atheist or devout believer, every journalist should be up to speed on the literary and cultural allusions that have come into the language from the Bible: 40 days and 40 nights, manna from heaven, etc. Same goes for Shakespeare. And I would add Greek and Roman mythology. Too many journalists seem clueless at basic references.
In terms of books, I’ve recommended to many young (and not so young) journalists William Manchester’s “The Glory and the Dream,” a political AND cultural history of the United States covering the 1920s to early ’70s. I don’t know about anybody else’s high school education, but too often history classes ran out of time as they approached the World Wars and shortchanged all but the most basic stuff. The result: a relative “black hole” of knowledge on anything from that period on until the person was old enough to follow “current events.”
Don, I agree that journalists should have a basic cultural awareness. I don’t agree that such requires reading the Bible and Shakespeare. Knowing chapter and verse for manna from heaven won’t improve anyone’s writing or reporting. But I might even go along with the suggestion — if older journalists would agree that they must keep up to date with youth culture as well. For every young reporter who doesn’t know enough about post-War history, I can match you with older journalists who are still peppering their copy with allusions drawn from movies, songs, TV shows and books that are unknown to readers under 35.
An excellent suggestion, John. As an older journalist (23 years in the biz), I still try to read at least two books on the bestsellers list, see most of the major blockbuster films in the theater and listen to the songs that go viral. As for TV, I can’t stomach the reality shows, but the rest I watch on Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/YouTube/iTunes. Now I just need to find a way to become immortal, so I can find the time do even more.
Before you say, oh, Jesus, who let Hunter S. Thompson in the room, please consider Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist / Gonzo Letters Volume II 1968-1976. These are the personal correspondences of a journalist at the height of his craft, committed to his craft at all costs, battling for truth and expenses.
Ed, I let Hunter in the room with “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,” already. The Gonzo Letters are interesting, though.
Love your list. I am not a journalist, only a reader who is fascinated by reporting, a gift from my parents who let me listen to Morrow when I was but a boy and got me hooked on new for life. Thanks for including Mencken, introduced to me by my uncle, a journalist, whose collection of Mencken I have in addition to my own copies. And thanks for Liebling, whose Earl of Louisiana was my young introduction to my own home state and city, and whose writing showed me what great expository, lively prose was all about.
So glad you included Edna Buchanan, Mike Royko, Studs Terkel and Ernie Pyle. These were the people I idolized when I first entered the field. Others I would recommend:
“Front Row at the White House: My Life And Times” by Helen Thomas
“Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers” by Alana Baranick, Jim Sheeler and Stephen Miller
“Thank You, Mr. President: A White House Notebook” by A. Merriman Smith
“City Room” by Arthur Gelb
“Late Edition: A Love Story” by Bob Greene
“Deadline” by James Reston
and
“My First Year as a Journalist: Real-World Stories from America’s Newspaper and Magazine Journalists” by Dianne Selditch
Thanks for the suggestions, Jade. And on behalf of my former colleague at The Plain Dealer, Alana Baranick, special thanks for mentioning Life on the Death Beat.
Alana is amazing, and her co-authors are award-winners as well (Jim even won the Pulitzer). If any young journalist wants to learn how to become an obit writer, this is the book to read first.
Disappointing that Dick McCord’s The Chain Gang didn’t make the list. A great read into Gannett’s shady history of crushing independents.
I’d never heard of McCord’s book before, Patrick. Which is a surprise, because my mom grew up in Peshtigo, north of Green Bay, and I spent a lot of summers up there so I’m somewhat familiar with the saga of the Green Bay papers. I’ll give it a look. Thanks!
No love for Charles Kuralt? It was Kuralt, not Woodward or Bernstein, who made me want to become a journo.
Thanks for the comment, Sam. I’m a print guy, myself, and had to fight that bias in assembling the list. Also had some concern about tilting the broadcast focus too much toward CBS, same reason I bypassed Cronkite’s autobiography. But worth a second thought.
As soon as you listed an SND annual, I gave up on this list.
The SND annual is the museum of modern journalistic decay. Your description of the “evolution” of design is laughable. What actually happened: A bunch of people who couldn’t hack it as editors came up with a way to redefine the work and to make editing of lower priority.
The result: A 40-year con game in which papers continue to claim they “attract” readers with their design, even though all circulation and sales numbers indicate otherwise. Some might call this “lying.”
The credibility of your list dropped to zero with that inclusion. I’m sure many pseudojournalists and others trying to cling to a level of self-importance will ruminate deeply about this list, but I’ve seen what I need to see.
In addition:
“Of your 100, only 18 are written or edited or about women. This seems unbalanced to me …”
Quotas as a guideline for quality — mmmkay. Someone must not have read much Ray Bradbury.
The call for quotas — another example of the total failings of modern journalism.
Hi, Bob! I feel honored to get my very own Robert Knilands trolling comment. This blog has made the big time, apparently. (For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Knilands is a frequent sniper on Internet forums about journalism, particularly about design.)
That’s a pretty weak counterargument. I had expected better, but I guess anyone who includes an SND annual in a list of must-reads has some issues.
Back to the oh-so-horrible-omissions, aka any book a self-important journalist DEMANDS inclusion for: I actually fished Roger Angell’s “Late Innings” out of the pile just a couple of weeks ago. There was time only to flip through a few random pages, but I remember it being an above-average read years ago. The big disappointment today was seeing the “circle the wagons” mentality that plagues far too much of what passes for sportswriting today. Nevertheless, I plan to get the book out again in the future, as I fully expect it will be several levels above the sewage that flows through today’s “sports” sections, many of which have sold out to weak social commentary and lame comedy routines.
Also, the page designers who are blissfully ignorant about yellow journalism and what it entailed should read:
“Emery, Edwin. The Press and America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.), 1962.”
Stunning omission: ‘Byline: Ernest Hemingway’ – any journalist who wants to learn how to tell great stories can learn something here.
Bob, comments like yours are a good reason for lists like this — I’m finding out about great reads I haven’t seen on any similar lists. Thanks!
Homicide by David Simon is vital. So is The Word by Rene Capon–it is the single best book for a fledgling journalist–or any writer–to read. And Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is overrated from a journalistic perspective. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is much better. McGovern’s campaign manager called it the least factual and most accurate depiction of the campaign for good reason.
I’ve heard a lot of support for Homicide. I’d never heard of Capon’s book. Regarding Fear and Loathing — I take your point, and comparing Boys on the Bus with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail would be interesting. Thanks for your suggestions, Bruce.
How many of the books on this list are still in publication? I was searching for books on Nellie Bly a few years ago, and I never saw that one. I’m interested in picking up some of these.
Christie
All the books that have a “Find in my store” link underneath are available as new copies (or Kindle copies) from Amazon. For other books, the “Find on Biblio.com” or “Find on AbeBooks” links to send you to search results on those used-book sites. Using any of those links will earn me a small commission on books you purchase, helping cover the costs of assembling this list.
Indispensible Enemies by Walter Karp
Karp was Lewis Laphams right hand guy at Harpers.
Bill Moyers said he was one of the six greats whom
Molly Ivins would have joined by now.
Karp divides the world of politics into hacks and reformers
and shows the hacks of both parties colluding to keep
all reformers out of power. Karp also shows us the role
of dummy candidates and thrown elections.
Nothing in American politics makes sense before Karp
Everything in American politics makes sense
after you’ve read Karp.
Also Gothic Politics in the Deep South by Robert Sherrill.
Sherrill was an emeritus editor at the Nation and Ivins mentor
at Texas Monthly.
And George Seldes. And Molly Ivins.
Thank you all for your suggestions, which i will
print out and read.
How about Night of the Gun by David Carr?
Wonderful list. Thank you for sharing the wealth. I’m not a journalist (I used to teach English Lit and currently run workshops on Innovation) but I’m fanatical about journalism. I particularly loved William E. Blundell’s “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing: Based on The Wall Street Journal Guide”. It’s a wee bit stodgy but it nails the vital importance of a clear underlying structure.