Traces the life of Mark Twain from his youth in Hannibal, Missouri, through his days as a riverboat pilot and journalist, to his literary success, describing his work, his troubled personal life, and his business failures.

In the wake of the loss of TV's top anchormen, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Ted Koppel, a seismic shift has occurred in broadcast news. A revolution had already been taking place on the Fox News Channel about the way news was being presented on TV. Bill O'Reilly has been the spearhead in that radical movement, masterminded by Roger Ailes, founding father of Fox News. To some, O'Reilly is a semi-demented cable TV talk show host, who can be an obnoxious, insufferable, opinionated, rude loudmouth whose views, the kinder ones say, are typical right wing drivel. But there is much more to O'Reilly than what meets eye. O'Reilly is the paradigm of idosyncrasy in television journalism. On the rough road to the top, O'Reilly learned how to give the public what it wants and thinks it needs. From his early education at the hands of nuns to an advanced degree in Public Policy from Harvard, from working at local televisions stations and rising through the ranks to network news, O'Reilly spent nearly twenty-five years learning his craft before he became an overnight star at Fox News. In this very intimate look at the man and what matters to him, veteran media critic Marvin Kitman explores all the experiences that led to the making of Bill O'Reilly--a non-conformist in a business that demands conformity as the price of success and a man who has risen to the top by not playing by the rules of broadcast news. Kitman claims that O'Reilly is not a kneejerk conservative, but an "independent" freethinker with a mind of his own, and he believes what journalism needs is more Bill O'Reillys. Not screamers, the blowhards like the current O'Reilly clones rushed on the air since his success, but trained journalists, reporting the news and telling us why, in their opinion, the world is a crazy place. Supported by twenty-nine interviews with Bill O'Reilly, Marvin Kitman pulls no punches in this powerful and hard-hitting biography that will provoke both "Spinheads" and "Anti-Spinheads."

An inside look at America’s largest newspaper— The Wall Street Journal ”Phillips offers fascinating insights about American business, politics, and journalism. He traveled in the circles of CEOs, U.S. presidents, prime ministers, and royalty; always at his core he was a reporter. That is the beauty of Newspaperman .” —Vernon E. Jordan Jr., civil rights leader; senior managing director, Lazard Freres & Company; adviser to President Bill Clinton “[Phillips] captures the fabulous stories of a scrawny, precocious boy from reporter to publisher and then CEO, participating in and then presiding over the Journal ’s years of greatest growth.” —Joan Konner, Dean Emerita, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism “Phillips fell in love with newspapers when he was a boy. He’s still infatuated but he doesn’t skip over his tough times or mistakes. That’s what makes Newspaperman such a telling guide to the newsroom and to the top office in the executive suite.” —Lou Boccardi, former president and chief executive, Associated Press; former chairman, Pulitzer Prize Board “This lovely book recounts the life of a wise, thoughtful, and admired newspaper editor and publisher. The tiny Wall Street Journal Warren Phillips joined grew up to be a giant. Newspaperman tells that story.” —Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive, The Washington Post Company “[Phillips provides] perceptive commentaries on Germany, Greece, Turkey, England, Spain, China, Russia, and the Middle East. All is told with modest good humor, but repeatedly emphasizes the need for integrity and high standards.” —George B. Munroe, retired chairman and chief executive, Phelps Dodge Corporation “The story of a boy born in Brooklyn, a reporter, an editor, a publisher, a corporate executive, and now the author of a fascinating book.” —James Q. Riordan, former vice chairman, Mobil Corporation “In spite of a few hiccups, honestly related here, Dow Jones was rated by Fortune magazine as the second most-admired company in the United States, and so proved that an outstanding newspaperman can also achieve enormous success as a business builder and leader.” —Hamish Maxwell, former chairman and CEO, Philip Morris Companies Inc. “A memoir from a man who helped transform The Wall Street Journal from a local newspaper to a global operation.. . . Throughout the book, Phillips looks at his part in shaping the Journal ’s news and editorial coverage, and these sections provide insight into his highly successful methods. The author includes many anecdotes culled from his diaries, some very funny, which illustrate the variegated aspects of his life and the people who shared in it.. . . A well-rounded autobiography about the journalism industry and the people who shaped the news over the past 50 years.” —Kirkus Reviews “The sections about the rise of the Wall Street Journal 's quality and influence are fascinating - for journalists and non-journalists alike.” — Philadelphia Inquirer ”Phillips provides an arresting retrospective on modern world history that general readers will find informative and delightful.” — Star-Telegram About the Book When Warren Phillips was eleven years old, his father took him on a guided tour of the New York Daily News , where he got his first look at the frenzied yet surprisingly ordered and controlled world of newspaper publishing. He saw everything from the industrial printing presses churning out newspapers at astonishing speeds to reporters hunched over their typewriters, writing the very stories those presses would be producing within hours—or even minutes. Phillips was hooked. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. Newspaperman tells the story of how an immigrant’s shy son from Queens, New York, rose to the top of his industry powered by little more than passion, brains, and hard work. Phillips began his career working as a copyboy for the New York Herald Tribune for sixteen dollars a week—and ended it as publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of its parent corporation, Dow Jones & Company. The life story of Warren Phillips is the story of the American newspaper business. Here, the details of his vast experience come together to create a broad picture of the newspaper business— revealing how news is discovered, reported, edited, published, and disseminated. Sharing vivid tales of working as a reporter around the world and describing the many colorful characters he meets along the way, Phillips provides a level of insight that only a leading figure in the industry could offer. Newspaperman gives you an up-close look at one of the most influential people in the history of The Wall Street Journal —and an unprecedented view of the business, from its rapid modernization during the post–WWII , cold war era to the early years of digital publishing and the rise of the Internet, which may mark the decline of the printed page forever. Phillips’s entertaining, penetrating, and impressively detailed account is a must-read for both devotees of America’s most iconic business publication and anyone with an interest in how news is reported.

An alcoholic journalist who's barely seen better days, Paul Kemp has washed up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, writing horoscopes for failing rag El News. But then he meets the impossibly gorgeous Chenault, and Kemp soon finds himself party to shady business deals and experimenting with a hitherto unknown hallucinogen.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. One of Library Journal 's Best Books of 2020. One of our most beloved writers reassess the electrifying works of literature that have shaped her life I sometimes think I was born reading . . . I can’t remember the time when I didn’t have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me. Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader is Vivian Gornick’s celebration of passionate reading, of returning again and again to the books that have shaped her at crucial points in her life. In nine essays that traverse literary criticism, memoir, and biography, one of our most celebrated critics writes about the importance of reading—and re-reading—as life progresses. Gornick finds herself in contradictory characters within D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers , assesses womanhood in Colette’s The Vagabond and The Shackle , and considers the veracity of memory in Marguerite Duras’s The Lover . She revisits Great War novels by J. L. Carr and Pat Barker, uncovers the psychological complexity of Elizabeth Bowen’s prose, and soaks in Natalia Ginzburg, “a writer whose work has often made me love life more.” After adopting two cats, whose erratic behavior she finds vexing, she discovers Doris Lessing’s Particularly Cats . Guided by Gornick’s trademark verve and insight, Unfinished Business is a masterful appreciation of literature’s power to illuminate our lives from a peerless writer and thinker who “still read[s] to feel the power of Life with a capital L.”

Recounts the transformation of two daily newspapers in the face of economic downturns and sweeping technological change. In 1978, Harry Rosenfeld left the Washington Post , where he oversaw the paper’s standard-setting coverage of Watergate, to take charge of two daily papers under co-ownership in Albany, New York: the morning Times Union and the evening Knickerbocker News . It was a particularly challenging moment in newspaper history. While new technologies were reducing labor costs on the production side and providing ever more sophisticated tools for journalists to practice their craft, those very same technologies would soon turn a comparatively short-lived boom into a grave threat, as ever more digitally distracted readers turned to sources other than print and other legacy media for their news. Between these boundaries, Rosenfeld set about to do his work. Picking up where his previous memoir, From Kristallnacht to Watergate , left off, Battling Editor tells the story of how Rosenfeld and his colleagues transformed two daily publications into alert and aggressive newspapers even in times of economic downturn. Bringing the investigative habits he had honed in his years at the New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Post , Rosenfeld’s objective was to tell the fully rounded stories of the region’s cities, suburbs, and rural towns, with awareness of both their achievements and their shortcomings. Furthermore, the misuse of power, whenever it happened, whether in city hall or the state capitol, in courtrooms or prisons, or in hospitals, corporations, community organizations, was to be exposed, and those accountable were to be held responsible. More importantly, however, Rosenfeld’s account is enlisted in the growing call to arms for all who cover the news and all who consume it. Written at a time when the credibility of news organizations is under attack by those at the highest levels of government, Battling Editor is a full-throated defense of fact-based journalism and hard-hitting reporting at the local as well as national level. “Harry’s book is often about tough decisions, and it stands out as a handbook on how to live an ethical life in the news business right now. Is it possible to tell the truth all the time? Sometimes. But this is an instructive narrative—especially today when the truth is such a rare commodity in the White House and Congress, and the financially beleaguered press is itself under threat as an enemy of the people. Harry and his family lived in Nazi Germany, and escaped it in 1939. A large part of his subsequent life has been an ongoing war against fascism, racism, and political criminals. This book explains how he waged that war on a daily basis in the newsrooms he managed so well, and for so long.” — from the Foreword by William Kennedy “Harry Rosenfeld made a choice. He left an exciting job at the Washington Post for the chance to do what so many editors dream of—become the guy in charge of two vibrant regional newspapers. What fun he had as a boss—being responsible for stories about local heroes, crooked politicians, and the day-to-day doings of a capital city. There also is a tinge of nostalgia in Harry’s memoir, for the kind of local reporting Harry lived for has all but disappeared in today’s newspaper world. Local coverage has been stripped away in newspaper after newspaper as all are facing dwindling readership and disappearing income.” — Seymour M. Hersh

2015's General Election and its profound implications for Britain's political and economic future. The year that led up to May 7, 2015 determined not just who governed Britain but the future of the country itself. Night after night Nick Robinson wrote in his private notebook what he saw and heard and thought after a day spent broadcasting from the campaign trail and the House of Commons, or interviewing the nation's political leaders. It records his insider's view of the extraordinary events he reported on day after day to millions of viewers and listeners. This was a year in which Nick asked David Cameron why he spent more on a dinner than the amount he was cutting from a family's annual tax credits; Ed Miliband whether he saw a prime minister when looked in the mirr∨ Nigel Farage why he employed his German wife and not a Brit to be his taxpayer-funded secretary and Alex Salmond why people should trust him and not businessmen. It was a year in which the BBC sometimes found itself dragged into the fight. This is a story not just of a battle for power but of the bare-knuckle fight between the established parties and UKIP, the SNP, the Greens and others to break the hold on power of the big three and the historic battle over Scottish independence and Britain's membership of the EU. Nick Robinson's Election Notebook is filled with insight, analysis and behind the scenes gossip during an adrenalin-fuelled year.