Journalism Memoir

For film aficionados, Walter Murch is legendary - a three-time Academy Award winner, arguably the most admired sound and film editor in the world for his work on Apocalypse Now, The Godfather trilogy, The English Patient, and many others. Outside of the studio, his mind is wide-ranging; his passion, pursued for several decades, has been astrophysics, in particular the rehabilitation of Titius-Bode, a long-discredited 18th century theory regarding the patterns by which planets and moons array themselves in gravitational systems across the universe.

In this perceptive, compelling essay, Katharine Murphy offers a profile of Anthony Albanese in motion – a piece about character, the balance of forces, and the mood of the nation. Are Albanese and his party up for change? Are Australians up for it? What does the new prime minister embody, if anything? Has the centre of the polity shifted, with the success of the Teals and the Greens? Where could – and should – the new government be ambitious?

An essential document of the first American war of the new century. During this journey into war, Rodgers and his crew embraced the dangers, the numbing fatigue, and the moments of stark fear of the young armored cavalrymen they lived with twenty-four hours each day, an experience that created for them the lifelong bond that only soldiers serving together under fire share.

The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay between experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for the truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism and best-sellerdom and acclaim for his revelatory books about The New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power), the Mafia (Honor Thy Father), the sex industry (Thy Neighbor’s Wife), and, focusing on his own family, the American immigrant experience (Unto the Sons).

The biggest crime story in American history began on the night of March 1, 1932, when the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was snatched from his crib in Hopewell, New Jersey. The news shocked a nation enthralled with the aviator, the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. American law enforcement marshalled all its resources to return “Little Lindy” to the arms of his parents - and perhaps even more energized were the legions of journalists catering to a public whose appetite for Lindbergh news was insatiable.

Gloria Rojas was born in New York City in 1939. She grew up in The Bronx and spent nine years as an elementary and junior high school teacher before accepting an opportunity to work as an ESL (English as a Second Language) instructor on the city’s Channel 13. Spending time in the television studio gave her an opportunity to watch the taping of the “The World at 10” news show, an experience that led her to pursue a career in broadcast journalism. After completing the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Gloria started at NYC’s Channel 2 News as the city’s first Latina...

Undaunted is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put in their way to do journalism’s most valued work. From Margaret Fuller’s improbable success to the highly paid reporters of the mid-nineteenth century to the breakthrough investigative triumphs of Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell, and Ida B. Wells, Brooke Kroeger examines the lives of the best-remembered and long-forgotten woman journalists.

Liz Truss’s journey from schoolgirl revolutionary to Britain’s shortest-serving Prime Minister. Despite being written off and mocked by even her closest colleagues, Liz Truss slowly but determinedly achieved her goal of taking over 10 Downing Street – only to instantly plunge her administration into chaos and announce her resignation after a record-breaking 44 days. How did she do it? And what exactly went so wrong?

This audiobook looks at the career of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson and how his version of reality compares to that of the mass media.

Is John McCain "for real?" That's the question David Foster Wallace set out to explore when he first climbed aboard Senator McCain's campaign caravan in February 2000. It was a moment when McCain was increasingly perceived as a harbinger of change, the anticandidate whose goal was "to inspire young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest".

Estela Casas is El Paso’s daughter. Viewers of the nightly news turned to her for comfort in times of tragedy. So when Estela was faced with her own setback, she turned to them. Estela led strangers on a very public and intimate journey with bilateral breast cancer, and turned her trials into everyone’s triumph. Estela allowed cancer to transform her and helped her find a place to anchor.

For a man who has been firmly in the public eye for the past decade or more, Matt Preston has been very, very quiet about his past and private life. There are reasons for this. Now, in Big Mouth, Matt opens up about his early years for the first time—the good and the bad, the tragic and the ecstatic. Like the man himself, it's a story that's joyous, funny and larger than life. It's also, perhaps unexpectedly, filled with pathos and emotional depth, set to a pulsating 1980s soundtrack.

A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, journalist Megan K. Stack, a 25-year-old national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she traveled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and other countries scarred by violence, witnessing the changes that swept the Muslim world and laboring to tell its stories.

Helen Garner visits the morgue, and goes cruising on a Russian ship. She sees women giving birth, and gets the sack for teaching her students about sex. She attends a school dance and a gun show. She writes about dreaming, about turning 50 and the storm caused by The First Stone. Her story on the murder of the two-year-old Daniel Valerio wins her a Walkley Award.

Thanks to one reporter's skill, we can fix the exact moment on November 22, 1963 when the world stopped and held its breath: At 12:34 p.m. Central Time, UPI White House reporter Merriman Smith broke the news that shots had been fired at President Kennedy's motorcade. Most people think Walter Cronkite was the first to tell America about the assassination. But when Cronkite broke the news on TV, he read from one of Smith's dispatches.

Unscripted is the inside story of the struggle to control one of the world's great entertainment empires. It is the story of the last great Hollywood mogul, Sumner Redstone: the ninety-something founder of Paramount Global who, well into his dotage and facing a scandalous lawsuit, proves increasingly unable to run the sprawling company he has built. It is the story of his daughter, Shari Redstone: Sumner's heir apparent who, despite being groomed for power for six decades, struggles to assert her authority over the company and her family's legacy.

The Watergate scandal began with a break-in at the office of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1971, and ended when President Gerald Ford granted Richard M. Nixon a pardon on September 8, 1974, one month after Nixon resigned from office in disgrace. Effectively removed from the reach of prosecutors, Nixon returned to California, uncontrite and unconvicted, convinced that time would exonerate him of any wrongdoing and certain that history would remember his great accomplishments—the opening of China and the winding down of the Vietnam War.

One of America's most admired television newsmen gives us an intimate chronicle of the final year of the 20th century. Here is the voice we know from Nightline - intelligent, curious, opinionated, witty, concerned - reminding us in entertaining and thought-provoking ways that even the most public events reverberate in our private lives. Hear an interview with Ted Koppel on The Connection.

David Dimbleby has interviewed prime ministers and presidents, made award-winning documentaries, chaired Question Time for 25 years, and anchored the BBC's live coverage of historic national and world events. Keep Talking is David's wry look at his own extraordinary career, and the people, events and controversies he has encountered along the way. As a broadcaster for the BBC, David had an obligation to appear a neutral observer.

At first it seemed like a small story. The royal editor of the News of the World was caught listening to the voicemail messages of staff at Buckingham Palace. He and a private investigator were jailed, and the case was closed. But Nick Davies, special correspondent for the Guardian, knew it didn't add up. He began to investigate and ended up exposing a world of crime and cover-up, of fear and favor--the long shadow of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.