The Powers That Be

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening ... but a little out of date
Review: Fascinating and lucid, this book has a lot of anecdotes that enable readers to get personal with it's characters. Considering that its 768 pages long, this book is not one you're likely to read cover-to-cover-and that's just fine. Also, the book is somewhat out of date, and does not discuss developments that have occurred in the last fifteen years or so at all. But if you want to develop your media savvyness and learn some intriguing history, this book is right on.

Rating:
Summary: Uniquely readable and mind-expanding
Review: For an avid news reader in Israel, such as I am, journalism in the United States always seemed like a role model, something the local press should aspire to. From the Pentagon Papers to Watergate, we've always been told the courage of the US media is something to imitate.

This book put me in some proper perspective. Halberstam's wonderful inside information, ranging from political pressure put on newspapers and the networks to squabbles among the press people themselves, avidly shows how limited American journalism was then, and by induction, how limited it probably is now. It mentions stories that were dropped not because they were not good or verified, but merely because some powerful figure in Washington, or worse yet a sponsor, chose to intervene. What to naive people might seem a scandal is shown here to be standard practice.

I heartily recommend this book. It's length (over a 1000 pages) can be intimidating at first, but not after you start reading - this is probably the most readable work I've come across, packed with information and yet never dull. While the scope of the book is limited (it was published in the 70s and does not go beyond Watergate), it is truly enlightening and mind-expanding, a must for anyone wishing to understand the media.

Rating:
Summary: massive, sprawling, interesting, and too much too
Review: I read and loved this book for the stories and details it gives on the American press over the period of its glory, to about 1980. At that time, in the wake of My Lai, Watergate, and the Pentagon Papers, the press had revealed to Americans how much we really resembled other powerful countries and the depths to which some of our politicians fell. Halberstam makes the people who contributed to this collective glory come alive, from Kay Graham at the Washington Post and Buff at the Los Angeles Times to Seymour Hersh and William S. Paley, founder of CBS. He tells the stories with his ususal high and humanistic style, in an unmistakable moral tone (at one point he laments that the Munsters were created in place of a news program). He also reviews the presidency and politics from about Eisenhower to Nixon in fascinating detail, with plenty of editorialising, such as Nixon's snubs of his original patrons at the LA Times.

It is truly great reading, but in the end there is a bit too much of it. In retrospect, it also appears dated, and perhaps places a bit too much faith in the press. For those life myself who increasingly feel that the press is ridiculously focused on personal foibles instead of issues and failed to do its duty during the Clinton scandals - preferring to keep a trivial story alive rather than point out that it has all, like, happened before - they will find little support and that Halberstam had any inkling of when things might go to far.

Nonetheless, no one has done a better job at telling the story of the press, in print and TV, than Halberstam. He also succeeds in putting a great deal of issues in proper perspective, such as the rich careers of Walter Lippman, Teddy White, and Walter Cronkite.

Rating:
Summary: massive, sprawling, interesting, and too much too
Review: I read and loved this book for the stories and details it gives on the American press over the period of its glory, to about 1980. At that time, in the wake of My Lai, Watergate, and the Pentagon Papers, the press had revealed to Americans how much we really resembled other powerful countries and the depths to which some of our politicians fell. Halberstam makes the people who contributed to this collective glory come alive, from Kay Graham at the Washington Post and Buff at the Los Angeles Times to Seymour Hersh and William S. Paley, founder of CBS. He tells the stories with his ususal high and humanistic style, in an unmistakable moral tone (at one point he laments that the Munsters were created in place of a news program). He also reviews the presidency and politics from about Eisenhower to Nixon in fascinating detail, with plenty of editorialising, such as Nixon's snubs of his original patrons at the LA Times.

It is truly great reading, but in the end there is a bit too much of it. In retrospect, it also appears dated, and perhaps places a bit too much faith in the press. For those life myself who increasingly feel that the press is ridiculously focused on personal foibles instead of issues and failed to do its duty during the Clinton scandals - preferring to keep a trivial story alive rather than point out that it has all, like, happened before - they will find little support and that Halberstam had any inkling of when things might go to far.

Nonetheless, no one has done a better job at telling the story of the press, in print and TV, than Halberstam. He also succeeds in putting a great deal of issues in proper perspective, such as the rich careers of Walter Lippman, Teddy White, and Walter Cronkite.

Rating:
Summary: Great Media Book
Review: This is a long book, but worth the time it takes to read. It's a history of the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine and CBS News.

Halberstam does an outstanding job of telling the stories of these organizations and tying them together in this book. The stories in this book are entertaining and informatative, teaching us about history, journalism and business.

If you've never read any of his books, this is a good one to start with. If you like it you should try some of his others, including:

The Best and The Brightest - A history of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and the Vietnam war.

The Children - A story about the Civil Rights movement.

The Fifties - I never thought it was a very interesting decade until I read this book.

The Reckoning - A history of Ford Motors.

He's also written some great sports books. The bottom line is that you can't go wrong with any of his books.