5 comments about Fear and Loathing in America : The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist.

1. For fans of the good Dr., This rates right up there with his other top sellers.His slant on the American Dream is certinally unique.



2. This is my second attempt at writing a review about that ATAVISTIC GIBBERISH called fear and loathing in america.I guess the review GESTAPO didn't like my totally honest review of HST's schizophrenic prose, in my first review(to their credit) i did say some things about HST that would make even DR.Gonzo, go GONZO, LOL!!!
   The MOST DISGUSTING part of this book is on page 199-200 when he offers his writing services for the kennedy's inre: to Mary jo kopechne's SO-CALLED ACCIDENTAL DEATH :-((( Can anyone be more pathetic than that???
   I could go on and on about this ATAVISTIC GIBBERISH but my LOATHING will undoubtedly draw more attention from the review gestapo.
   Don't get me wrong, there are some funny letters from HST and guest, but the DISGUSTING OUTWAY THE HUMOR by 10 to 1 :-(((
   Hopefully this review will see the light of day, i truely believe it needs to be read, there's been enough GIBBERISH from his syncophantic minions.



3. The second installment in HST's selected letters, Fear & Loathing in America has proved to be a fascinating read. Beginning in the 1950's, HST keep carbon copies of all his letters for filing purposes in the belief that one day he would be a famous writer and his correspondence would be published. Like so many other Thompson predictions, this one proved true. The range and scope of the letters contained in this volume is simply amazing. HST had contacts and correspondence across almost every section of American society from Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchan, Gorge McGovern, and Walter Mondale at one end of the spectrum to Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe, Jann Wenner, and Oscar Acosta at the other end.
   
   The time period covered by these letters have proven to be a crucial period in modern history and nobody should be without a view from HST's side of things. From the 68' Democratic National Convention to the 75' American withdrawal from Vietnam, the Mint 400 in Vegas to his own personal bid to run for Sheriff of Pitkin County (Aspen) on the Mescaline ticket, HST was there and more often than not part of the action. In this regards his letters read like a quasi-autobiography, tracing the twists and turns of his life throughout this turbulent period of American history. For the creator of Gonzo Journalism, this was his defining period.
   
   It is certainly preferable to start with the first volume HST's published letter, if for nothing else it provides a better context for this volume. I have to confess that I enjoyed vol. 2 more than the first, so I guess it really depends on what you are after. I found myself laughing out loud at numerous occasions while at other times rather stunned at the insight and predictive nature of some of the correspondence, specifically the politically orientated ones. Of course there are other times when HST degenerates into pure gibberish, but all the parts add up to give a composite picture of that unique and individual whole we have come to know as Hunter. So read this book when you get the chance or anything else by HST for that matter. For me he is the best US writer of the last 50 years and I do not say that lightly.



4. If Volume I of the trilogy is "Rebel with a Cause (Writing)," then Volume II (this volume) is "Whining for Dollars." If you are new to Hunter S. Thompson, start with Volume 1 -- it will give you a much better feeling of who this man was, especially with regard to the risks he was willing to take to tell a good story. If you are interested in politics of the 1960's and early 1970's, and want to read about all his problems with getting paid, this is the volume for you. Having said all that, HST was truly incredible: in 1968 HST recognized Bob Dylan as the icon of the 60s; HST was everywhere -- from the Matrix, the womb of The Jefferson Airplane in San Francisco, to Saigon in April 1975, during the evacuation; and as a political junkie, HST could see the impeachment of Richard Nixon coming long before it did, as well as the eventual fall of South Vietnam. The first volume is much wilder, and even more sentimental; by Volume II, HST is starting to settle down.



5. Ordinarily, I wouldn't think letters would be that interesting. But Thomson's style and sense of humor are so outrageous, I find myself laughing out loud every few pages or so.
   
   But it's much more than humor. The letters overlap the period of Martin Luther King's Assassination, Robert F. Kennedy's Assassination, the Democratic National Convention of 1968 (which he attended), etc.
   
   I was struck at how he tried to convince his younger brother to stay in college for at least another semester, because by then, we would probably be out of Vietnam. It was apparent to him at the time that we would leave. And yet...Saigon didn't fall until April 1975.
   
   He also has a particular revulsion for Nixon, who has always been a fascinating figure for me. And of course,there are letters to his fans. He clearly has fear and loathing for some of them. His letters to and about them are hillarious.
   
   A great read.

2 comments about Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching.

1. Giddings' biography presents the life of a woman whose courage and intelligence transcends the time in which she lived. Wells story resonates with the troublesome duality of being black and intelligent during a time that most of society saw African Americans as less-than-human. Moreover, Giddings' research builds step-by-step to grow an illustration of Wells resplendent in its examples of unintended consequences. Each violent action by the racists unintentionally shines light on Wells poetic writings that casts each action in its stony hatred for all humanity not only black humanity. Consequently, Giddings' prose flows through each active time of Wells' career as a journalist and writer of civil rights chapbooks almost as though she were channeling Wells herself since Wells story builds from one hair-raising escape from one bigoted southern town to the next. Pick it up.



2. I wanted to read about this wonderful woman I've heard so much about. I also wanted to read about her since she lived during the same time as my great grandparents . I've been studying the family history and I get a great since of what their lives were like. A must read for anyone wanting to know the history of that day. Lots of things happening then apply to our current history. Written in excellent style and great understanding.

5 comments about The Ride of Our Lives.

1. The PBS series based on this memoir is entertaining, but the book is so much more. It's poignant, it's deeper, and it's much, much funnier -- laugh out loud finny. Marge and Jack emerge in the book as three-dimensional people, not just the target of jokes that the TV version focuses on. You'll also learn heart-rending details of their childhoods, the pervasive sadness that both have coped with, and you'll understand why Mike Leonard thinks he leads a charmed life.



2. A good quick read. The book is funny,sad,and so much like most of our lives. The family is a say it like it is. We are just as we come take us or leave us. I would take them, read the book it was very enjoyable.



3. This was a wonderful real life account of a family's journey
   through life's many turns.A story all family's can relate too!
   Bought young and old will enjoy it. I liked it very much.
   
   Brian Klune, Colchester,CT.



4. I enjoyed the book so much. Mike Leonard has written an amazing book about a trip with his parents and how much he learns about them. The book makes you feel like you are riding along with them in the RV experiencing every mile of the trip. I laughed out loud and even cried like a baby in spots. I am now watching the series on the PBS channel on Thursday nights. If anyone can tell me how to get in touch with Mike Leonard (ie) email. Please let me know by emailing me at rangersfan5@optonline.net. I would love to let him know how great his book was.



5. I laughed till I cried tears!! Very vivid in his writing, you feel like you were a fly on the wall and living the dream with them! WONDERFUL READ!
   It was nice to read a book like this in the world today!

5 comments about The Man Who Made Lists.

1. Interesting book abut the Peter Roget, the creator of the ubiquitous Thesaurus, but it is a dry read, jumps around. At times the book feels as if it were written by the Peter Roget it describes: emotionally absent the author simply narrates events in Roget's life.
   
   In the hands of a more skilled writer like Eric Larson this would have been a most excellent book. Like other reviewers have said, finishing it was a struggle, which I did out of interest purely in the subject matter.



2. A good utilitarian biography about a figure in history whose contributions are little thought about today. Roget, who created the Thesaurus at a time when there was nothing close to it and the need was great, also invented the modern slide rule led major scientific societies, and contributed to the natural sciences. A good handling of an unusual man, and well worth the time to learn about the man. My only real complaint is that Kendall seems to apply a 21st century sense of judgement on Roget's relationships (and difficulties therein). This sense may be somewhat due to the lack of cited evidence when such opinions are interjected.
   
   Still, a recommended read for a word maven, list keeper, organizer, or just to fill in a hole in one's knowledge of the movers and shakers of the early days of what became modern science.



3. I was disappointed in this book because I wanted to know all about the creation of Roget's Thesaurus and the author spends less than 10 pages (actually more like 5 pages) on that topic. In fact, by the time the book gets around to this topic, it is very close to the end.



4. I don't know how much of that was poor writing, how much of it was an often two-dimensional Roget, and how much of that was lack of source materials.
   
   I vote primarily for the former, though.
   
   Given the amount of near-psychotic depression in Roget's family, Kendall could have done much more interplay between that and Thesaurus categories than he actually did. Just telling us he was a "word person" rather than a "people person" could have been done in a book of 50-70 fewer pages.
   
   In short, Kendall didn't develop a good enough "hook" or work with it well enough.



5. Brevity is the soul of wit. The subject matter is incredibly interesting and the book is well researched. Unfortunately the book is poorly written, so much so that I am going to have to work rather hard to finish it.

5 comments about Sports Illustrated: Hate Mail from Cheerleaders and Other Adventures from the Life of Reilly.

1. I feel a sports columnist's job is to evoke emotion in the reader. Make him/her laugh, cry, get angry, just don't bore them. Riley does that better than anyone. He's an amazingly gifted writer and I loved nearly every bit of this book. I'd already read most of these columns being a subscriber to Sports Illustrated, but they were definitely worth a re-read.
   
   He's great at tugging the heartstrings: The story on the cross country runner with cerebral palsey, the Middlebury fan who is confined to a wheelchair because of CP, the father who nominates his son -- killed in a motorcycle accident -- for Faces in the Crowd. All tear jerkers.
   
   He makes me laugh throughout the book, and get angry with all those arrogant/self-entitled athletes such as the steroid users.
   
   He's not just a sportswriter, he's a great writer. I can't recommend this book enough.
   
   * I wish Riley would've stayed with Sports Illustrated. I've heard he's dabbling in TV or ESPN, somewhere. Bad move. I've seen his TV commercials, he's not good on TV. He's a superstar in print, he should stay there. Nevertheless, this is one heckuva book.



2. As a recent Journalism grad this book was amazing. I would love to get into the sports writing field (although I have a feeling I'll never reach Reilly status). This was a great set of stories and life experiences. Very humorous and very touching.



3. I read a few chapters each night.
   
   One night I had tears on my pillow from laughter.
   
   The next night I had tears on my pillow from the inspirational story.
   
   It's likely that many of my friends will get this book for Christmas or their birthday. Just a great book!



4. I have read Rick Reilly on and off in SI for years. I am not a regular subscriber, so my readings of his work have not been consistent. I was getting ready to take a trip and wanted something that would be fun to read. I saw the 5 star reviews (on Amazon) of Rick's book but I was somewhat skeptical about getting it. As a University of Tennessee alumni and fan I had been upset when he had written an article slamming Pat Summit (legendary UT women's basketball coach) about "running up the score" on one of the Lady Vols opponents. Despite all this I decided to take a chance. I needed a good read on my vacation, and I knew he was a good writer, and I needed have a laugh or two while flying, or more often than not,sitting in the airport during another delay.
   This book is far more than I expected. This book is very funny, but many of his articles are very touching, and he exposes the best and the worst in the people involved in sports. Sports are the venue, but it is his insight into the people that make the stories so compelling.
   As a big fan of the late Jim Murray's writing, I never believed there would ever be another sports writer that good, but I think Rick is getting to that level. A great read, a must read, for any sports fan, period! Every bit a 5 star rating and more.



5. When my husband's Sports Illustrated comes, I open it up to the last page and read what Rick Reilly has to say. I really like his column and the fact that he went onto the Oprah Show to try to defend his gender...I know, I know, it is a losing battle if you saw the episode, you know what I mean. The column is usually is the only thing I read in the magazine. So when my husband mentioned Rick had this new book out I had to get it for him...if for nothing else to see him actually reading a book instead of Sporting News or Sports Illustrated.

5 comments about Ava's Man.

1. If chronological order is important to you, Ava's Man should be read as the first in the series of Rick Bragg's three biographical novels. Charlie Bundrum's story is the first of what we will learn is two family's lives in the rural south during turbulent times. Then, as now, when life is hard people find many different ways to survive. Generations later, we have the luxury of looking back with a critical eye. That's easy. When you're cold and hungry, the view is different.
   
   In this book, Bragg shares with us the life to Charlie Bundrum who, along with Ava manages to rear a house full of children who survive with him and sometimes without him. One of those children is Margaret, Bragg's mother. Hard working and hard living, Charlie did all he knew to do to get by.
   
   More than in either of the other two books in Bragg's trilogy of his family, Ava's Man tells us more about the history of region, industry, and the impact of war, all of which contribute to the making of the man, Charlie Bundrum.
   
   While Bragg writes, he always manages to let the characters tell the story...in their own words. That language, and the crafting of the true tale he tells, leaves this "their story." On the other hand, Bragg's own turn of a phrase is "my language," that upon which I was reared. And is that which makes me feel like going home.



2. I have read all of Rick Braggs books and thia was the best. I felt like I just wanted to keep on reading. He is such a powerful writer. I just wish he had more books out there, but the ones he has written are the best. You will not be disappointed reading any of his books. There is no wondering why he is a Pulitzer Prize winner.



3. I have only read one other book from this author (about Jessica Lynch). This is a very personal story of the author's grandfather who died an early death before Bragg was born. It is heartfelt because the author describes both the qualities and faults of his granddad. His grandpa liked homemade corn mash moonshine and sometimes was dead drunk when he came home. However, he provided a loving family life for his wife, sons, daughters, and grandkids. This man set a certain morality to how he lived and died. His was a small tragedy that he never lived to see how famous one of his grandchildren became.
   
   Along with his grandfather's life, one also discovers the hardships of life in the depression era South. People who lived in the country did not go hungry if they knew how to hunt and fish. However this family was frequently evicted or moved from their rented home. This is a nice little story about a true family.



4. I've never much cottoned to white male Southern writers, not even to Mr. Faulkner. They too often seem swollen, full of machismo, overly conscious of their Great Literary Tradition. But not Rick Bragg. Bragg is a real story teller without all the Southern Writer baggage.
   
   Take his Ava's Man. That man is Bragg's grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, dead before Bragg was born but still living inside people who knew him. Using their memories, Bragg rebuilds his grandfather's life and the life of the woman who loved him, Ava.
   
   I cherish Bragg's book for four reasons:
   
   1) It's well-paced, written in short chapters that often left me with a swift intake of breath.
   
   2) It has marvelous characters, vividly drawn. My favorite minor character is Hootie. Bragg writes, "He had a face like a pickax. His nose was long and hooked, and pointy on the end, like he had bought it at the Dollar Store and tied it on his face with a string, and it curved all the way down past his lips."
   
   3) Bragg has a instinct for apt comparisons, often as striking as these:
   
   of Bragg's great-granddaddy: "[He] moved like a shadow through the forest, his hobnailed boots soft as velvet slippers in the dry leaves."
   
   of his ancestors: "they grew in [that culture] the way a weed grows in a crack."
   
   and my favorite, of Ava: "there were spiders and broken glass in her voice."
   
   4) To top it off, Bragg writes with clarity and compassion about his grandparents and their world. This book features Brundum, Ava's man, but it also paints a glowing picture of Ava who is just about as feisty as they come.
   
   Read Ava's Man. You'll like it.
   
   Marilyn Coffey is an award-winning writer of poetry and a widely published author of prose. Read her work: Great Plains Patchwork, Marcella, or KANSAS QUARTERLY Vol. 15 No. 2.



5. Rick Bragg has done a great job in telling it exactly, and I mean EXACTLY like it was in the South in the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's. He takes a seemingly insignificant character- an illiterate carpenter, roofer and moonshiner- and brings out the full flavor of the man.
   
   Laughs? Plenty. Like coming home drunk on his mule, trying to get the mule to rear back like Tom Mix's saddle horse, but instead having the mule dump him off on his head. Heartache? Having to bury an infant daughter because there was no money for medicine- let alone doctors. Character development? No shortage at all.
   
   The book slowly hooked me, and I just couldn't put it down. His staying one step ahead of the "revenue men" (who never did catch him), his trying to find steady work to support his large family, the descriptions of the kids growing up in a series of small houses with no electricity, and all in all, the pure fun in a man who loved to entertain.
   
   If you can, get the audio book version of this excellent book- Rick reads it himself. "It don't get no better than this."

5 comments about Paris to the Moon.

1. This is a book for francophiles. It might be a good resource on French culture and attitudes if you will be spending an extended time traveling or working in France. But if you are looking for good literature, skip it.
   
   Should have known by just opening the cover - the first SENTENCE in the book has 9 (count 'em - NINE) commas in it. The prose is self-centered, self-conscious, and self-congratulatory.
   
   You are regaled by sentences like this one: "The lucidity of Parisian empiricism was bought at the price of the grandiosity of Parisian abstraction, and you couldn't have one without the other".
   
   Gopnik is the sort of author who thinks when he breaks a fingernail, it's significant and we need to know. You get an entire chapter devoted to a bedtime story he made up for his son, end to end.
   
   The author needs to get over himself, and the editor needs to go back to flipping burgers. Spend your valuable leisure hours reading something else!



2. PARIS TO THE MOON is a collection of essays by a NEW YORKER writer. Gopnik and his wife moved to Paris in 1995. When a young teen, he visited Paris in 1773. After the couple's child was born in 1994 they endeavored to fulfill Adam's desire to live in Paris while their son was still portable. The romance of Paris became the author's subject for his NEW YORKER pieces. There was no big story in France. There was a lot of peace amd prosperity in the world and a lot animosity directed toward the United States. When Adam Gopnik thinks of Paris he thinks of his wife Martha and his son Luke.
   
   French politicians engage in ostentatious displays of detachment. The Parisian government has a clutch of domaine prive apartments. In reality, most apartments in Paris are not available to rent in a market sense. It seems that one of the politicians lodged his entire family in various domaine prive apartments. French life in general is chock full of entitlements. North African immigrants, though, have no entree. The French elites have now decided that the cure for hidden deals is transparency. Gopnik describes a strike. France is a centralized country and anything that mainly affects Paris is a national event. French people deal with an event by pretending it isn't happening. (Picasso and Sartre pretended the Germans didn't occupy Paris.)
   
   The writer's son Luke enjoys the Luxembourg Gardens, even in November. Trying to join an American-style gym, the author discovers that the rhetoric, the cult of sport is absent in France. Talking about the bureaucracy takes the place of talking about sport. In France there is no retirement anxiety. People don't linke the notion of stopping to work with stopping to live as people do in the U.S. It is believed that what France needs is its own Bill Gates. It has a philosopher, Habermas, who contends that the basis for the state is the human love of arguing.
   
   The French have been obsessed with Vichy for more than twenty-five years. Thus, they did not finally confront their past during Papon's trial in Bordeaux. Explanation turns first on romanticism, next on ideological rigor, and finally on the futility of explanation. In 1997 there was an incident at the Eiffel Tower. The French draw their identity from their jobs, the Americans from what they buy. Adam Gobnik decides that couture is romantic cartoon. Yves St. Laurent is still the favorite in 1997 of the Socialists in the government. He uses opera arias to show his clothes. The new Bibliotheque Nationale, a Mitterand grand project, is, according to Gopnik, in the totalitarian Luxe style. Other transformations of cultural sites have been undertaken at the Louvre and the Bastille Opera. Jazz, loved by the French, and Impressionism, loved by the Americans, confirm the simple physical basis of powerful emotion.
   
   Alice Waters is in Paris at some point during the writer's stay. He offers to cook dinner for her and is nervous. Her ends up cooking lamb for seven hours where four would have been appropriate. It seems that the purpose of the visit of Alice Waters to Paris is to determine the feasibility of opening a restaurant at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs at the Louvre. She has reconciled utopian politics with aristocratic cooking. The crucial unit of French social life is the cohort. Members of the cohort inhabit neutral places such as parks and cafes.
   
   The couple's daughter Olivia is born in Paris. Since Paris is beautiful, but France is not a life, the family returns to America. The book is both amusing and instructive.



3. An interesting collection of essays about family life in Paris. Gopnik's erudite, interesting descriptions of the City of Light will delight Francophiles, although his writing is fairly pretentious and pedantic at times. Nevertheless, this book is still a worthwhile read.



4. I picked up this book for insights on the less-touristy aspects of Paris, prior to a trip my family is taking. It's a very enjoyable book, and the author's descriptions definitely have raised my anticipation level for our visit, as well as given me ideas about places for kids. Plus (as many other reviewers noted), it's a funny and charming book. As the husband of a former chef, I enjoyed his discursions about cooking, too.
   
   My one complaint comes from the occasional pretentiousness and preciousness of the author's lifestyle. How many of us could move to Paris for five years during the prime of our working lives? And how many of us could take a month's vacation to the US in the summer, or fly our kids back for two days of interviews for kindergarten? Kindergarten?
   
   The author comes from a very small slice of our society, and he both downplays this and celebrates it at different times. And I don't like it. For example, his literary allusions -- whether French, English or American -- go over my head. I'm a well-read person, but I feel as if the author is trying to show that he has a greater range than his readers. To shift from Baudelaire to the New York Knicks within a few paragraphs is trying to have it both ways -- the intellectual and the common man.



5. This book has been enlightening in at least one respect - I thought one had to be an upper-class English twit to be this pretentious. Gopnik, of course, is not the former, but he is most certainly the latter.
   
   To be fair, occasionally Gopnik does present a humorous nugget or a unique insight into Parisian life (though not French life; he is only a Parisophile, not a Francophile.) It's the other 95% of the book's self-indulgent prattle that is so annoying. I swear that if Gopnik thought that too many readers understood the massive amounts of French in the book, he would switch to Latin or Greek. He is not merely a name dropper, he's a word dropper.
   
   While it starts out well enough, no more than 1/2 way through the book the reader is reduced to skimming page after page of discussions about food, reports of haute couture fashion shows, and an endless series of boring reflections on his young son. Toward the end of the book Gopnik even mentions taking his 4-year old on a trip back to New York in order for the boy to be interviewed for admission to a good pre-school! What a turkey this Gopnik character is. How is he ever going to explain all this pomposity to the boy when he grows up?

No comments about Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson.

5 comments about The Curse of Lono.

1. The last great Thompson work that I have read which I hadn't bought because it's a bit expensive, but worth it in my opinion.
   
   Fear and Loathing, the Rum Diaries and Curse of lono... no more good Thompson to read.



2. excellent book. i was completely new to his writing beefore reading this gem. crazy bleep* guy! his work seems to be more of a writers' journaling than serious novel-stuff. a travel-blog; if you will.. i haven't gotten into many of his other works yet plan to, eventually. even a holy-roller could come out freshpresssed and standing tall after one of his tales. good stuff, though. very good stuff. if you were one of those, 'say no to drugs' individuals then a lot of this might come off as tumultuous and confusing and weird and odd and, basically, not ur cup of tea.. take care and rest that crazy mans' soul. cheers.



3. WHile I was aware that this book was illustrated, I was not aware of the fact that it is huge! I thought it would be an illustrated, regular novel-size book. Instead it's about A3 size, and very heavy.. The pictures are great and all but if I had been aware of the size of this book I probably wouldn't have purchased it.



4. The Curse of Lono is classic Hunter S. Thompson. Steadman's illustrations bring the twisted story to life in this beautiful coffee table book. A must have for any diehard fan of Gonzo!



5. This books is probably the least well-known of HST's books. But it was a very pleasant surprise upon reading it. It is classic Thompson, self-destructive, paranoid, and hilarious. If you take his word for it, you might never visit Hawaii yourself!

5 comments about The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News.

1. Back when television news was about news and not entertainment, Roger Mudd was one of the very best correspondents, and this is one of the very best books about television when it took its responsibility seriously.



2. This book takes me back to the time when watching the evening news was a big deal. It was something you did before dinner every night. Roger Mudd was always one of my favorites, with his seemingly casual and calm manner. Hearing about the news business from his perspective was interesting and revealing. Reading his book was a pleasure and I recommend it.



3. From the late 1950s to 1980 I, like countless Americans, was a devoted fan of CBS News. Anchored by Walter Cronkite, CBS News boasted a galaxy of gifted correspondents who covered those exciting, horrifying, puzzling years with unrivaled professionalism. To my mind, Roger Mudd was first among equals as regards a CBS team that included Dan Rather, Marvin and Bernard Kalb, Daniel Schoor, Eric Sevareid, George Herman, Bob Peirpoint, Bob Schieffer and so many other talented individuals. THE PLACE TO BE is Mudd's informative, witty and entertaining memoir of those glory years.
   
   As with 'Uncle Walter,' Roger Mudd always impressed me as an insightful, unflappable and discerning newsman. Beyond that he seemed to possess a touch of irreverence that sometimes revealed itself in a 'Do you believe this?' twinkle in his eye when he was reporting on the latest Congressional boondoggle. Those same qualities are in evidence throughout Mudd's book, most of which is devoted to the period from May 1961, when he became a CBS correspondent, to February 1980, when he walked because of the boneheaded decision to give Dan Rather the anchor position.
   
   Reading through THE PLACE TO BE is akin to revisiting all the important - and a few not-so-important - news events and personalities that shaped the American experience. We are immersed once again in the Civil rights struggle, the years of JFK, the Cuban Missile Crisis, LBJ and the Great Society, Vietnam, various political conventions, Congressional doings, etc.; the difference being an incisive, knowledgeable guide who helped cover and explain those momentous events to us then...and now.
   
   Obviously part of the delight in Mudd's book is the insider's view of the CBS newsroom and finding out what happened when and who did what. Given how poorly Mudd was handled as regarded Cronkite's succession, I think he did an evenhanded job in relating life at CBS News and in discussing the many people he's worked with over the years.
   
   THE PLACE TO BE is an easy read, funny and affectionate and sometimes surprising. All those men and women were a part of our lives - friends almost - and it's fascinating to see them in action and also find out what was happening behind the camera as well. And it is sad in reading through the 'Where Are They Now?' section to discover so many are gone.
   
   I'd give THE PLACE TO BE six stars if possible. It's a first-class memoir of some exciting times and talented people by one of the best correspondents to work for CBS. I can't remember when I've enjoyed a book as much!



4. Roger Mudd confirms what many print journalists have known for years...Television is filled with egomaniacal back-stabbers who are more concerned about 10 seconds of airtime than journalism, proving once again what the print media has known for years. American's who depend on television as their only source for news are sadly lacking in their knowledge of current events. His revelations about corporate headquarters being more concerned about politics and the financial bottom line than facts, shouldn't surprise anyone.
   I would however strongly recommend the book for an insider's view of how television news networks actually operate.
   Art Giberson
   Pensacola, FL



5. This is a story that needed telling. Having spent thirty years as a television journalist and knowing Roger and his work personally, I heartily recommend this book written by a true professional. It exposes the arrogance and personal bias of a number of big names who became legends in their own minds.