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This book is such great entertainment! The sisters, the crazy mammy, it's funny and great.

I thought this book was terrible. It was an absolutley typical story about love and loss - done 1000 times over. There were so many little sub stories that began to develop, only to disappear and never be seen again in the story (i.e. the crazy gardener). The ending was SO predictable. Frankly I can't believe anyone agreed to publish this piece of garbage. Don't waste your time!

"Watermelon" was a blessing in disguise to me. I lived in England for four years, and when I returned unexpectedly and suddenly to the U.S., I found myself somewhat "homesick", and started reading every British chick lit author I could find in my local library. I'd seen Marian Keyes on British TV once, and knew that she was Irish, and that was the extent of my knowledge. When I saw her books available on this side of the pond, I jumped on them (having never actually read them while on UK soil). "Watermelon" saved my life, in a way, and while that may sound a bit extreme for a work of fiction, well, it really did.

From the onset, I was sucked into the book, not just by Keyes' engaging style and humor, but by her incredible insight -- in this case, not simply on life itself and her astoundingly sympathetic portrayal of Claire and Claire's emotions -- but it was like Keyes had somehow gotten inside my own life. Claire's daughter was born on Feburary 15th: this happens to be my son's birthday as well. While I wasn't abadoned by my partner on the very day I gave birth (it was a few years later), there was another woman involved, and all the feelings that Claire experienced after her husband left her I was also going through at the time I read "Watermelon." Having gone from being self-sufficent in my own household with a young child and a seemingly happy life, to living again with my parents (also in their new role as grandparents) and having to put up with my blood family's quirks, was something I absolutely related to -- as this was my own situation. I traveled with Claire through the process of being angry, hurt, afraid, and learning that life does go on, and that moving on, even to a new love, is possible.

The near-freaky thing is that the scenes where James tells Claire why he thought the failure of their relationship was completely her fault eeriely echoed the way my ex used to talk to *me* about our problems. After I read the pinnacle scene where James gets his come-uppence from a newly-confident and healing Claire, I kept having fantasies of flying back to England for one night just to do the same to my ex.

And as if all that wasn't weird enough, at the time that I read "Watermelon," I was faced with the possibility of a new relationship, but after all I'd been through, I was scared and unsure. After I cried through Claire's resolution with James, and got burning-hot fuzzies from her impending new start with Adam, I felt confident enough to embark on my own new shot at love (which was definitely the right decision and has made me very happy). Even though Claire is a fictional character, all of her emotions and journey mirrored my own, so that when I saw she'd survived, it made me feel that I could, too. For that, I wholeheartedly thank Marian Keyes and hope God blesses her.

Personal feelings aside, "Watermelon" is an entertaining, funny, clever and heartwarming story, and proves that Keyes is not just a "chick lit" author, that she actually writes fine literature. I've enjoyed the rest of the Walsh sisters tales (especially "Anybody Out There?"), and am really looking forward to Helen's. (Because Claire is so close to my heart, it nearly made me cry to know in later Walsh stories that she ended up happy and regained her confidence.)

Having never read anything by this author before, I decided to purchase this book after reading some of the positive reviews. In general, I enjoyed the story . . . but the characters were not developed well AT ALL. The story made it seem as if the baby was just left in a room all day . . . and not really given much thought. I didn't really "get" Claire's family. Like I said, the characters were not well developed so it made it hard to feel connected to them. Some of the story lines were a bit far-fetched and a little hard to believe.

Having only read one of her books, I'm not inclined to write this author off just yet. However, I hope this is one of her less inspired writings.

This book is far too long for what it is trying to say. The writing is really really annoying, esp. the parts when different emotions like guilt and shame have conversations. Its so silly that it makes u feel like a nit wit. You're better of reading some of her other books or books by different authors. if your a chick-lit veteran, you're not going to like this book.

Absolutely perfect biography. Graham's book is frank in ways few would care to be. Her leadership of the Washington Post has been much talked about, and I'm a big fan of the paper, so it was a fascinating story. When she took over the Post in the 1960s, women could not be found in too many positions of power. She honestly discusses her difficulties, self doubts, and mistakes in ways one is not likely to find in many other places. Since I find politics interesting, I appreciated Graham's insights into the development of media over the twentieth century and her candid insider thoughts on some of the most important and powerful leaders of the 20th century.

This is a great book about a great woman! Interesting to see how even the privileged have difficult experiences in life and how it all only depend on us. We are very capable of achieving our goals and this book shows that even though it might not be easy, in the end, it can be very rewarding. This book shows a great insight in the history of newspaper business and politics.

It is long (642 pages), and the print is small. Why would anyone want to read it? Because every page has something of interest in it. And because this is not only the personal history of Katharine Graham, but a view of the United States from a woman reluctantly thrust into power by the death of her Washington Post husband. The time covered is from the early 1900s, when her parents met, through the early 1990s. Think of how life changed during that time.

Mrs. Graham was raised by nannies in New York while her parents were busy helping out in Washington. She showed her independence by attending the radical University of Chicago and working before she married. When Katherine's father stepped down from management of the Washington Post, her husband, Phil, took his place. When Phil became ill and died, it was she who became president of the Washington Post Company.

Constantly during this sweep through politics, labor relations, corporate management, the rise of feminism, the importance of communications, and much more, Graham weaves her personal growing consciousness of where she and other women stand in relationship to it all. She writes of the help she received and downplays her own acumen in becoming the only woman in the Fortune 500. Never does she flaunt who she was, who she became, and the power she held.

Every page brings not only her personal insights about the (mostly) maturing of America, but also explains how she gains confidence while remaining concerned with and involved in her own family as well. An excellent read, but don't expect to finish it in one reading.

by Judith Helburn
for StorycircleBookReviews
www.storycirclebookreviewsorg
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Fantastic, gripping book, though it bogged down for me near the end with the minutia of labor/management disputes at the Washington Post. Still recommend highly.

My only regret is that I did not pay more attention to Katharine Graham and the Washington Post while she was alive. Through unveiling her own insecurities and illustrating how she moved into one of the most powerful women in the world, I learned US History and the trials of a CEO woman in the 1960s and forward.

Ms. Graham reveals much about "inside Washington" and does a particularly good job of making the "players" come to life. I really hated to see the book end. Yet, Ms. Graham did what she set out to do -- documented a time in our history. Kathy Condon Executive Coach

This was an unusual experience. One of the greatest, most honest hooks I've ever seen, which is how I knew after one short page (out of 551) that this well-written book just wasn't for me. It's an intelligent romance in a scenic setting, and I believe the reviewers who call it witty and literate. I picked that up pretty quickly. But I'm just not a romance reader. And Maeve Binchy, who I'm not saying anything bad about, convinced me to throw my informal "10% rule" right out the window. Okay, who's next in my list of unread authors?

I have read many of Maeve Binchy's novels and am always inspired at her amazing ability to weave a story that involves many different characters, their lives, and their personalities in such a real and thought-provoking way. She is an amazing storyteller!

An engaging and entertaining novel, in which Binchy takes a rather ordinary experience and shows a deep understanding of the people involved. In this case, it is a group of working class Dubliners who come together for an adult education class in Italian at a run-down inner city school. The point, which she conveys brilliantly, is how this humble experience means so much to these people. Some have used up their savings to take this class. An unwed mother and her daughter, who work in a butcher shop; a bank employee who once dreamed of seeing the world, but who is now stuck taking care of his mentally handicapped sister; the son of a corner shopkeeper trying to protect his family's store from local thugs, etc. Basically, they all understand that this meager class is their only vacation from the rough neighborhood in which they will live out their lives. For balance, Binchy throws in a couple of rich characters too.
By telling each character's narrative seperately, but showing plenty of cross-glimpses such that we see them becoming friends, we get a sense of their struggles and what this experience means for them in terms of their dignity and their dreams. As always, Binchy is neither sappy or sensationalist; she tells the stories straight, without any melodrama. Marriages dissolve without fanfare, nice guys miss out on promotions and watch their career hopes fizzle with no more drama than it would get in real life. No major events need happen. This is a story of ordinary lives and you sense that the author truly understands them

Binchy does a marvelous job of entertwining of seemingly vast different people. Her characters come alive. I symaothized and found myself pulling for them all. A bit slow a spots and certainly no action adventure, but if you like well told stories full of realistic characters a good read. Liek sittign down with an old friend and catching up.

The new Signora moves into town... It is a mystery to the town folks where she is from and a mystery as to why she is able to speak Italian so well. Because she is single and lonely, she begins to start teaching Italian classes at the local college. The classes make her relive her life when she was younger and lived in Italy. They bring back fond memories of being in love. The classes change her life; they give new meaning and purpose to her present life. Soon after, through many twists of fate she comes together with Aidan Dunne, a teacher, who is surviving in a life-less marriage...

One of my favorite books of all time... The plot is simply amazing. Maeve Binchy is a master story-teller!

Alan Furst's "Foreign Correspondent" is an easy and fascinating read, especially if one is familiar with the scenario, i.e. Paris, Berlin, and parts of Italy. I am fortunate in having some familiarity with all three.
This was a page-turner, the likes of which I had not read in a long while. Thank you, Alan Furst, for writing "The Foreign Correspondent".

I am about to begin reading "The Spies of Warsaw", but am actually saving it for an anticipated, hopefully short, hospital stay. If it "grabs" me as did the Foreign Correspondent, I plan to get all of the other novels written by Mr. Furst. And yes, I am a child of that era (actually, a holocaust survivor).

Yes, it's formulaic Furst and that's why we love his books. This is one of his best, which may be surprising, because there is a paucity of "action" and a plethora of internal monologue, suspense, intrigue, suspicion, etc. An unassuming correspondent for Reuters moonlights as the editor of an Italian resistance newspaper during the pre-WWII days when Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy consummated their sleazy courtship. The correspondent -- Weisz -- stumbles from one intrigue right into another as this book unfolds, mostly in Paris, but also in such places as Berlin, Spain and Italy. Nobody -- absolutely nobody -- can put the reader so firmly into pre-war Europe as can Furst. His brooding novels re-create the grayness and pessimism of a continent about to explode. Also, romance propels this book forward. The last page of the book is absolutely delicious (if you peek you won't understand it -- you gotta read the book!) and left me chuckling in admiration not only for the final scene but for every page of this wonderful book. Hope to read many more works from this gifted author.

As my first foray into espionage thrillers, I was excited to see what was ahead -- would it be military-focused and procedural (ala Tom Clancy?) I hoped not. I wanted something more akin to Patricia Highsmith. I wanted brooding, the anti-hero, classic European sights, twisting plot, dark and light characters.

I definitely got that -- and more: history, pre-WWII, insights into the political machineries that Hollywood-produced movies self-centeredly miss.

As a fan of fantasy books, with their self-produced maps and a world built from scratch -- I found a close resonance in Furst's world, although his map is of Paris. I was tempted to pull open Google Maps and try to verify; but the descriptive writing, the way he weaved me into the surroundings authenticated the facts and I completely believed the story.

I'm off to buy my next Furst novel.

The Foreign Correspondent, by Alan Furst, was an interesting "book". I experienced the abridged audio version on CD, read by Alfred Molina.

The setting is just before World War II in Italy, France, and Germany. The Fascists in Italy are becoming too cosy with Germany. Underground newspapers expose these relationships. It is a deadly game of cat and mouse, as newspapers struggle to print and distribute their papers, while government agents try to shut them down.

The story, as abridged, ended on an anticlimactic note. My sense is that the abridgment left out some of the critical tension in the book. As the last CD ended, we looked at each other and said, "what kind of ending was that?" There was drama, intrigue, history, chases, and more, but the ending went splat.

I'll peruse the book in the library to see what I missed here.

With 'Foreign Correspondent', Alan Furst's renown continues to grow. Furst once again centers his novel in pre-World War Two Paris, but this time his protagonist hails from southern Europe - Italy - rather than France or eastern Europe.

Carlo Weisz is a journalist with the Associated Press (in a time when the AP was still a very big deal) in Paris where he has landed after fleeing Mussolini's Fascist Italy (absurdly Fascist, as one of Furst's character's suggests?). The book opens with a political assassination in Paris and then we find Weisz in the waning days of the Spanish Civil War and where he makes a connection that serves him well while covering the Republicans.

Weisz is also active in publishing a resistenza newspaper that is smuggled back into Italy. As per usual, Weisz is a rather ordinary, if talented, man with good moral instincts. Slowly he is drawn into ever more daring acts of resistance. Along the way he renews a love interest in Berlin just before things go from ugly to intolerable. Weisz seeks to use his career and his underground work to somehow rescue the fraulein from Herr Himmler's Gestapo.

Furst once again uses the backdrop of Europe edging to the precipice of war - Paris, Nazis, the Spanish Civil War, a love affair - to give us another great historical spy novel.

Nicholson Baker's Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper is a fiery polemic dedicated to the task of protecting what he sees as one of our nation's most important resources: our libraries' massive stockpile of seldom-used older books and newspapers. As Baker explains, the extent of our paper reserves of old newspapers and rarely read old books is dwindling, often being chopped up and "preserved" (that is, their content, rather than their form, is preserved) in either microform or a digital format.

Baker's position is not a nuanced one; we need to save everything. To do this, libraries need to purchase warehouses, warehouses basically without end, so that not a Sun-Times or musty tome is thrown aside. The very first sentence in the summary on the back cover reads "The ostensible purpose of a library is to preserve the printed word" which shows Baker may have a basic confusion between the definition of a library and the definition of a repository, but never mind: the point is, Baker says, a library neglects its duties when it throws away disused materials.

Baker's writing style is eloquent and engaging; however, the entire book is dominated by a one-sided and hostile tone, along with his distinctly uncharitable characterization of his opponents.

I think the basic philosophical difficulty in Baker's position can be found in the chapter with the title "A Swifter Conflagration." Here, Baker fully reveals his philosophical position that all pieces of written media are valuable as individual objects. It is not merely enough that a rarely-used book's contents are preserved somewhere; merely disposing of a particular object is itself always a dereliction of duty.

Baker says:
"The truth is that all books are physical artifacts, without exception, just as all books are bowls of ideas [i.e. textual content]. They are things and utterances both. And libraries, [Baker's ally] believes, since they own, whether they like it or not, collections of physical artifacts, must aspire to the conditions of museums. All their books are treasures, in a sense..."

This is a rather overstated thesis. Some books and newspapers are valuable essentially for their own sake, rare books such as the Gutenberg Bibles, for example. However, it doesn't follow that every library must preserve every non-duplicate book or newspaper on its shelves, some of which, such as pulp novels, are almost certainly disposable once their shelf-life is over. What Baker calls for is for libraries to devote large portions of their physical holdings to items that, not virtually, but literally, do not circulate.

Clearly, there are some documents for which preserving the content, as opposed to the object, is enough. Sometimes a microform copy may be enough. But in any case, a non-print version of some kind will be enough for a large number of items, such as research and journal articles is certainly enough.

There are times in Double Fold when Baker seems to be using the sheer confidence of his vituperation to slip some questionable logic past the reader. At one point Baker complains that the Library of Congress threw out ten million dollars worth of public property. However, his criterion for this figure is replacement value. This is a somewhat meaningless, almost sneaky figure. A lot of otherwise worthless things might be rather pricey to replace. Being difficult to replace does not make something valuable in the first place.

This is not say there are not some worthwhile themes in Double Fold. Baker's complaints about microform are well taken, his call for a national repository even more so. While I may disagree that individual libraries are responsible for every physical document they've ever possessed, it would be nice for historians if they could expect to find them somewhere.

Baker also provides the reader with an entertaining and occasionally fascinating history of book "preservation," including the disastrous use of large, book-filled, black-goo spurting tanks of explosive gas, formerly owned by NASA. Another memorable anecdote involves the creation of paper from the wrappings of Egyptians mummies.

The fact that Baker's book is quite biased and sometimes infuriating should not dissuade an intelligent reader from giving it a shot; however, some practical knowledge of libraries and a questioning attitude are prescribed.

Well, pretty clearly vandals. Let me give another example or two of how right Baker is. I've been doing some historical research on various topics in 19th and early 20th century New Hampshire and Vermont history. Newspapers of the time are full of relevant information. Alas, actual copies of the newspapers I need no longer exist. Specifically, the Hanover (NH) Gazette, Burlignton (VT) Free Press, etc. All have been destroyed and now exist only on microfilm, much of which is simply unreadable. It would be one thing if librarians had microfilm copies of newspapers produced AND kept the originals so that those of us who needed to consult the originals could do so. But they didn't. They tossed the originals and these no longer exist. If this isn't vandalism, I don't know what is.

I don't doubt the author's word that there are isolated examples of libraries discarding old papers but I dont see any Orwellian conspiracy.
As a graduate student in Library Science and Information Studies, I would much rather manage e-books simply because paper is a big hassle. I also get tired of seeing trees cut down for untouched books.
Furthermore, managing information technology as opposed to baby sitting books has more appeal to employers and provides more cover for higher salaries.
Schools of Library Science/Information Studies can attract better students and more students to degree programs that provide skills as opposed to esoteric book studies.
However, there is no conspiracy against paper. To the contrary, the State University of Iowa offers graduate classes dealing purly with book studies.

...to even think of blaming libraries. Maybe if high powered political figures on library boards across America didn't feel the need to make their served institutions "All Things to All People" and got back to core values, and if the American public could turn off American Idol and reality TV long enough to end the Reign of the Retard, there would be the support for libraries needed to house all the items ever published anywhere, and every Podunktown can have it's own Library of Congress. Guess you've truly made it when you've sold enough books you can bite a hand that feeds you, Mr. Baker.

However that does not detract from the quality of his writing, stellar as usual.

Would suggest this be listed in the Hall of Fame.

I love the resume format for each literay agent! Helped me tremendously in making a decision.

I'm trying to get a book published and this book is an excellent resource on how to write the proper query letter and assemble the perfect proposal submission to a publisher.

And, of course, this book has an exhaustive list of publishers of all kinds as well as literary agents. My only complaint would be that I wish they had an index organizing the agents by the genres they accept. It's a minor quibble on an otherwise flawless book.

You can read these sort of books morning, noon, or night. But it all comes down to one thing: integrity. And agents have little or none ... The very nature of selling a book is antithetical to artistic achievement. Just look at the trash that sells to the bovine minded public and you'll understand why Jeff Herman recommends medocrity over artistic achievement. Art is beautiful but it doesn't sell. And sell you must if you want to be the next big thing on the Times best seller list. Oprah not excluded. Baa Baa Baa

Jeff Herman is one of the top literary agents in New York. In this book, he offers his own insights, and he also calls on many of the key players in the publishing industry to explain, from their perspective, exactly how the business really works.
Learn what an acquisition editor looks for; what motivates an editor to want to publish your book; and the mechanics of the whole process. Armed with this information, you are in a much better position to contact the editors and agents listed in the book. There are other more famous books about markets available to writers... but this one is the best one... in my humble opinion. Oh... in case you think I'm prejudiced... Jeff is my agent and has done wonders with the material I've given to him: We've submitted four projects, and have four sales! I follow his advice, and do whatever he tells me to do with hesitation.

This and other books like it purport to help writers. It is certainly comprehensive and well done. The reality is that the gatekeepers and the keymasters of the publishing industry are publishing lots of books for writers that do not seem to advance their cause. This book looks more like an advertisement by literary agents for literary agents and editors, rather than anything that is truly meant to help the writers among us. The literati turn their noses up at most of the query letters they receive.

Take a look at the responses most writers get to their queries and you will realize that the literati hold themselves to a much different and lower standard than they require of the writers who query them. This tome makes money for the insider not commensurate with what those who purchase it get in return. His rewards are orders of magnitude greater than any that can be derived by a writer purchasing this work.

"Don't believe everything you read in the papers" - more or less sums up what John Allen Paulos says in this Mathematician's eye-view of the printed news. But I would take that caveat a step further - especially in the light of today's news media: "Don't believe what you hear or see either!" Mainstream media it seems, is way to easy to manipulate, subjugate and otherwise coerce into only telling stories which the powers-that-be want the people to hear. Who decides what is written about? Who decides what ends up on television? This book was written at a time when the Internet was not quite the ubiquitous source of information it is today. Heck, in 1995 - even to someone like me, the word "Amazon" still conjured up the image of a lush, steamy rainforest somewhere in South America. In this light, the book represents a sort of snapshot of history in the days when people still had a modicum of respect for print on pulp from (possibly) rainforest trees, delivered every morning to their doorsteps. Strangely enough, this book may even serve as an epitaph to the Newspaper itself.

The book is actually structured like a regular newspaper, however with insightful (if a little mathematical) criticism by the author himself. You won't need a degree to understand what he is saying, however you will require some basic (High School level) knowledge of Statistics and Probability. John A.Paulos is a Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic - and thus he frames most of his arguments in an Aristotelian fashion, avoiding the cryptographic symbolism which pollutes (or, clarifies?) modern day mathematics. In short, you can read this book without a pencil and paper. What makes the book delightful however, is the author's ever-present sense of humor (which I suspect is a little funnier to those with some mathematical background themselves!)

The only problem I have with this book is the subject matter itself. I do believe that eventually, newspapers will go the way of the dinosaur. And maybe in another 65 million years or so, sapient beings will wonder at how strangely attached our minds were to the woody pulp of Amazonian trees.

I love this book. It gives concrete numbers to common sense -- and not-so-common sense. I particularly liked how Paulos uses examples from all areas of life. The political/voting section is especially interesting!

This 1995 Paulos book is written in the form of a newspaper, with many short chapters not particularly related to each other, grouped into sections--politics, economics, and the nation; local, business, and social issues; lifestyle, spin, and soft news; science, medicine, and the environment; and food, book reviews, sports, obituaries. Each chapter is headed with an actual newspaper headline that bears some relation to the topic discussed.

The book has a few minor repetitions from Paulos' other works, but is mostly new material. It is entertainingly written and informative, providing useful information about how to critically analyze a wide variety of subjects, suitable for both readers and writers of newspapers and other forms of news reporting, including blogs.

This is a more accessible exposition of his ideas in his previous book, `Innumeracy'. It consists of a very eclectic collection of short essays that I think can be illuminating in a myriad of class settings: science, critical thinking, philosophy, math, and journalism, to name some.

By its nature, however, it can be somewhat redundant. Also, the point of a good number of the essays seemed elusive at first reading. I found a lot of his footnotes more interesting and worthy of further discussion, and would've liked them to become expanded into their own essay.

Besides the print media, his criticism and advice can be suitably applied to the electronic media and beyond.

As a mathematician who has, in the past year, been reading a few volumes of Ayn Rand and who has a degree of familiarity with the works of John Allen Paulos, including A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, I have wondered how Rand and Paulos would have gotten along with each other. In a day and age where many have turned to faith or reason, where the former seems to more frequently be exclusive of the latter, there are numerous affinities that can be characterized between the two authors, both of whom have asserted to be on the side of reason. In the review of this book, I will try to draw out these similarities while assuming that I am one of the first at this particular attempt.

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper is a getting back to basics reference to helping one interpret his or her surroundings from both empirical and metaphysical points of view. Where Rand's philosophy of Objectivist Ethics provides sound arguments on why people should try to be rational thinkers as opposed to mere altruists who defer their opinions and conclusions to those of others, Paulos' mathematical logic in this book provides applications on how rationalism can be a guide to enable one's discernment between what is fact and what is misinformation.

I do not know John Allen Paulos' view on philosophy, but I think that, with his expertise in mathematics and mathematics' presence in the real world, his works, so far, have, in their own feasible way, supplemented the ideological and social constructs developed by Ayn Rand and those belonging to her particular think tanks. Why? Because, like Rand during her day, Paulos has academically crusaded against anti-intellectual, collectivist dogmas.

Just as Rand endorsed the establishment of an objectivist philosophy to form the best of arguments and conclusions on the basis of utilizing the highest levels of reasoning, Paulos, in this book, has emphasized the field of mathematics in the same regard. From both schools of thought, objectivist philosophy and mathematics, have been wars declared on fearmongers, feel good doctors and snake oil salesmen who use emotionally driven ideologies that ultimately disappoint and faulty statistics to deceive the masses, whether intentional or not.

Where one in the humanities might cite cases of altruism and the abandonment of reason in the context of placing blind faith in the manifestos of how society should be, Paulos warns that the same parallels can occur in mathematics, where one can be deceived into thinking that what are direct, cause and effect correlations are actually apples and oranges comparisons. Throughout A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, Paulos uses examples that seem nonmathematical, such as racism, crime, everyday gossip, drug testing, etc. and demonstrates how a lack of mathematical understanding can hinder one's total perspective of the aforementioned.

In conclusion, I would like to say that Paulos, with the themes and tones set in A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, has carried on the works of many an outstanding scholar and has left words of admonition fit for those absolutist, intellectual elites who claim to have all the answers in the domains of their respective fields. They are as follows: "Always be smart; seldom be certain...Whether we admit it or not, it seems that we all tend to rise to our level of uncertainty. We master the easy links, the local correspondences, the ways to get by...New understanding develops, but we tend to keep pushing until we come up against social and physical phenomena that are too complex for us to grasp or foresee in any detail."

Hard News is former Newsweek writer Seth Mnookin's book about Howell Raines' twenty-one month tenure as executive editor at the New York Times, during which the Jayson Blair reporting scandal occurred.

Mnookin's narrative is almost always fast-paced and engaging, dragging only occasionally (notably when he gets into the minute details of the team of reporters responsible for investigating Jayson Blair's reporting). Even so, Hard News is more often downright entertaining. On the back cover, The Washington Post Book World blurb says, "Hard News reads like a thriller". While this may sound improbable, it is to some degree true.

One of the reasons Hard News is so interesting is that Mnookin's main characters are larger than life. Howell Raines is interested in using the New York Times to build himself a grand legacy, and so he institutes his own changes, to an extent, for their own sakes. Raines more or less goes mad with power - he isn't interested in dissenting opinions of any kind. For Mnookin, Raines is a tyrannical dictator of the highest order. Mnookin really gives Raines the business. From beginning to end, Raines is the villain of this piece, misguided, arrogant, and oblivious, and the blame for more or less everything bad that happened at the Times during this period is laid at Raines' feet. Certainly, Raines was the one primarily responsible, and the situation that resulted in his ouster was to a large degree of his own making, but the reader may get the feeling here and there that Mnookin has at least a small axe to grind against Raines.

Jayson Blair comes across as a pathological liar, who may very well have some kind of mental illness. He very clearly has no scruples, ethics, morals or principles. He showed no remorse for his catastrophic fraud; he tried to cash in on it with a memoir filled with more fabrications. And when adversity strikes, Blair is the boy who cried "racism!". Given his long history of journalistic problems and fabrications, Blair's rapid rise at the New York Times seems unbelievable. Certainly it fits well into the "truth is stranger than fiction" category.

The full title of the book is Hard News: Twenty-one Brutal Months at The New York Times and How They Changed the American Media. Yet beyond commenting on how some media do more in-depth fact-checking (although he also notes that many media still do not fact-check), Mnookin really doesn't get into how the media changed. Rather, he hints at how these events have changed how the media are perceived by the American people, how they have lost credibility and trust across the board.

On the whole, Hard News is about as gripping as an account as one might reasonably expect to have about this sort of thing. But the reader may well wonder if Mnookin has been fair in his representations of Raines and others and if, in the end, Mnookin has reported all sides of the story.

Goes after the sacred cow, the New York Times. Put things in prospective of why and how news is reported. Also lets you into the inner circle of the mainstreet media and how it operates. Good education for the person who is not familiar on behind the scenes of news organizations.

Read it. It's a great book. Five stars.

Hard News has three parts (Before, Spring 2003, and After), and provides a good overview of the history of The Times, the workings of the newsroom, Blair's quick rise as a reporter, details of the Blair fiasco, and how the Times dealt with it.

Mnookin concludes the book with a thoughtful Note on Sources, more than 250 source notes, and a good bibliography.

If this is a topic you followed, or you are a journalsim junkie or a Times-ophile, this book is a must read.

Hard News is about the brief and troubled reign of Howell Raines as executive editor at the New York Times. It is a powerful story and is ably suited for the book form with its sweeping arc of great success (winning six Pulitzers early) and then a great scandal followed by defeat and resignation in tight twenty-one period (although the author kindly expands this a little to give the reader context concerning life at the Times). The troubled writer Jayson Blair fits into this narrative but it is definately not his story. Besides being both gripping and informative, this is also a book for anyone who cares passionately about the concept of unbiased news, an idea that is sadly almost becoming quaint and old-fashioned in this new Fox-centric universe. This is also a story for those who actually care about the New York Times because despite its troubled period, the passionate people who work at this paper come out very well in this book. It is a book that is hard to put down, a tale told well by Seth Mnookin. Highly recommended.

"Hard News," Seth Mnookin's fascinating and well-researched account of the now-infamous Jayson Blair scandal that shook the foundations not only of the New York Times but also the way journalists do business, is a crisp read. The author is always objective, and his sourcing would seem to be impeccable. For the most part he uses sources who will speak on the record, and when they would not he claims to have verified what they've said with others. And source notes and a bibliography are provided.

In Mr. Mnookin's version, the story focuses on what happens to people who make wrong choices that they easily could have avoided--that is, if they were not the prisoners of their own ideology and life experiences. The account starts with the misguided notion of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. that the head of the op-ed page, Howell Raines, a narcissistic, inflexible left-wing ideologue best known for his invective-laden editorials against, mostly, conservatives, but also Bill Clinton, could function as the newspaper's executive editor, in which position he would be in charge, not of a small group of like-minded ideologues, but of a newsroom with hundreds of employees of varying opinions and, of course, abilities.

Generalissimo Raines couldn't function in that job, and in the process of failing he managed to alienate most of the staff while turning the newspaper into the journalistic version of a banana republic, led of course by himself.

Then, the author moves on to the equally bizarre decision by Raines and his no. 2, managing editor Gerald Boyd, to send Jayson Blair out on big stories (the DC Sniper, Jessica Lynch). Blair, a dimestore sociopath, fantasist, and substance abuser, had already been warned by his direct supervisors about his job performance, but Raines and Boyd would eventually claim, improbably, not to know of this when the scandal broke.

And scandal there would be. Blair would repay their trust in him with plagiarism, after which he graduated to fabrication, and ended up writing stories with out-of-town datelines without ever having left the Times Building on West 43rd St. in New York. (In the process, as Mr. Mnookin outlines, he demonstrated creative uses for cell phones and photo archives.)

When Blair was exposed and forced to resign, the Times assembled a group of reporters and editors to investigate every story Blair had written, and the result was the sensational report that appeared in the paper one fateful Sunday in May 2003.

That report made the Times the butt of jokes, and within two months Raines and Boyd were fired; then, after a brief interregnum in which the previous executive editor, Joe Lelyveld, who Raines disdained, returned to pick up the shattered pieces, Sulzberger selected Bill Keller, who had been passed over in favor of Raines two years before. Keller moved rapidly to restore order and institute changes, among them the hiring of the Times's first public editor.

As for Mr. Sulzberger, he escaped unscathed--which is unsurprising: his family owns the New York Times Corp.

The book is compulsive reading. Even though the outcome is known, "Hard News" nevertheless has the feel of a police procedural. Maybe you'll start imagining who might be cast as the principals if (or should I say when) there's a movie made of this cautionary tale.

I am a lawyer from las vegas, that traveled to moscow, russia, numerous times to host a business venture. After my first trip, i came across this book and was startled to realize that Ames is on the money with his description of Moscow. Anyone planning a trip to Moscow, must read this book. It is an easy read and really allows the reader to gleen an inside to the beauty behind the beast that is Moscow.

You'll be disapopinted and wishing for more when this book ends. You will want to read more of the exploits of the eXile and its two fearless leaders, Ames and Taibbi, and fortunately you can at www.exile.ru. I learned about the eXile while reading Taibbi's book Spanking the Donkey about the 2004 election. Since discovering it, the eXile has been a tremendous way to pass the time at work. Despite finding much of what they describe of Russian life terrifying and disturbing it has not tempered my desire to visit the country as soon as possible.

Also, if you enjoy the writing of Hunter S. Thompson you will definitely enjoy reading the exploits of Ames and Taibbi. They seem to be carrying the torch, albeit a dim one, into the twenty-first century. It is a sad commentary on our consolidated, witless, boring media that some of the most interesting reporting by young writers has to be found in an independent newspaper in Mosocow of all places! The eXile would probably not get published in our "land of the free."

I fear that my eyes will get a non-negligible STD every time I read the eXile. Worth the risk? Your call.

This book is a must read for anyone that desires understaning of russian societal mores. Mark Ames particularly does an absolutely wonderful job with his gloomy delivery explaining Moscow sex, drug and media scene throughout the 90s. I must warn you, this is not your typical narrative about what has transpired but an actual account of first hand experiences that he went through. It is not by any means pretty, but it was reality.

The other half of the book is written by Taibbi, which has a drastically different approach to writing style. His is more 'conventional' with less biased opinions and oriented mostly around facts re politics and media. I personally prefer a dark account of the world from the eyes of Ames but this is a question of preference.

This book is not for the faint of heart, it goes deep into the male psych and examines our primal instincts as they related to various vices such as sex and drugs. If you are a women, and get easily offended I suggest you passover this book for a new release by Dan Brown. Although, if you think you can withstand some unconventional wisdom as it pertains to the expat female scene you will throughoughly enjoy this.

I think this book is a great read for anyone planning on traveling to russia and getting a 'beyond the surface' understanding on the people and their rationality. Having been to Russia numerously I think little has changed since the book was written.

Pants-splittingly funny... Ames is a whiny, infuriating misanthrope who happens to be really, really funny. People who voted for Bush, content suburbanites, and feminists will loathe this book equally. The eXile web site remains the only thing worth reading on the web.

The only positive comment one can make about this sorely disappointing excavation of the Sulzbergers and their newspaper is that it's written in fluid, clear prose. That's it! This is quite surprising given the credentials of these two supposedly fine journalists; they did a wonderful job excavating another newspaper dynasty -- the Binghams. But this time, little insight is offered; instead, the reader is loaded down with gratuitious gossip. Historic and psychological contexts are shabbily rendered. One can't help but wonder if Mr. Jones, who comes from a newspaper dynasty himself, albeit of a much smaller scale, was not dealing -- negatively dealing -- with his own issues in this book. The Sulzbergers, particularly, Arthur jr, a brilliant, progressive, and humane publisher, and deserve better.

Tifft and Jones rip the gown off the old Gray Lady to reveal the hidden secrets of the family that made the New York Times the respected powerhouse it is today. The story of the Ochs/Sulzburger clan appeals on two levels. First, it is the story of the making of the newspaper, the ethical and financial decisions required to make the Times both reputable and profitable. And second, it is a good old scandal story, filled with affairs and family altercations, and Times Square palace intrigues. While the book remains superficial about the journalism, it delves deeply into the characters, who are of course the most fun part of the tale.

It is not surprising that this book's major revelations have not had greater circulation given the nature of family ownership of the vast majority of the biggest media conglomerates in the country, including the massive Gannett holdings of all forms of media all over the world, the enormous Newhouse "out-of-the-shtetl" holdings of not only papers, but magazines, book publishers and electronic media, the Washington Post, and its TV stations, etc., but you would think that some of them would be discussed a bit more than zero. Unknown in the US is any coverage of what the rest of the world classifies as the "Jewish conspiracy" of media dominance in the US. It appears daily in the major media in the Islamic world as the reason for US support of Israel and the reason for jihad against the infidels. It also explains much of French, German and British hatred of the US, long before GW Bush showed up. This book covers some of this, but not much, and is one of the reasons it does not get more stars. But the book has some great insights such as the following.
Did you know that Punch Sulzberger viewed the current publisher, his son "Pinch" Sulzberger's positions on the Vietnam War to be treasonous because his son said he would cheer on the death of an American soldier over a Viet Cong in Vietnam in a face to face fight? Do you know that the majority of the editorial positions at the Times are held by militant homosexuals, and that one of the editorial writers at the Times is married to a member of the Massachusetts Supreme court who cast the deciding vote on the issue of legalizing gay marriage in that state but never revealed his affiliation in his many columns on the issue? (The Times' own ombudsman, Daniel Okrent, recently said that the Times' coverage of homosexual issues has crossed the line from reportage to advocacy.) Do you know that the Times is a "publicly held" company, but the family has prevented any kind of modern corporate governance with its stranglehold on its preferred stock while at the same time the paper screams about corporate transparency at every other corporation in the US? And that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to "The Trust" that guarantees the succession of the male heir to the throne. A corrupt American version of British primogeniture in kingly succession to the Time's monarchy.
But this book also shows why the Times has become a shadow of its former self, is beset by scandal after scandal such as the Jason Blair forgeries (which occurred after the publication of this book) and has resulted in the gradual decline of a formerly great paper. While newspapers are probably doomed in this century, just as the town criers before them, as they are replaced by the internet and cable television news, you can find out why The New York Times is in its death spiral by reading this book. Unfortunately the authors were reluctant to get into the business consequences of the loss of credibility of publications such as the Times with mainstream Americans, but this is still a very worthwhile book. Unfortunately the billions of dollars sucked out of the unsuspecting shareholder of the Times never gets to read about the corruption and moral bankruptcy of current Times management, but this book would be a good place to start.

This is a monumental work of multiple biography and institutional history.

It is cumpulsively readable, like a good novel. This book became my trusted companion during many relaxing evening hours and solitary restaurant meals.

It is also admirably crafted. As in their previous book The Patriarch (about the Bingham family of the Louisville Courier-Journal), Tifft and Jones write beautifully and with great skill for handling detail and narrative.

They also have the ability to balance candor and fairness, steering a sober, high-minded course between warts-and-all skepticism and obsequious hagiography. As a reader you sense you are getting a careful portrait of each major character's personality, strengths, foibles, fond traits, and character flaws, while never getting the feeling the authors are doing either a flack job or a hatchet job.

That's not to say certain characters don't come off better than others. For example, the authors seem consistently sympathetic toward the modestly talented, often hapless but usually wise "Punch" Sulzberger, the dominant figure at the Times from the mid 60s through the mid 90s, while casting his wife Carol as a shallow, cold-hearted Nancy Reagan type. But the book rings of truth and authority, and so one generally trusts the authors' assessments.

While this book overwhelmingly is concerned with people, not events, it provides a valuable account of the internal debates over whether and how to publish the Pentagon Papers. It also illustrates the paper's vigorous post-war anti-communism, its cozy relationship with the Eisenhower administration, its internal battles over editorial voice during the political and cultural upheavals of the 1970s, and its generational differences over homosexuality (contrasting Punch's bigotry with his son and successor Arthur Jr.'s determination to make the Times a progressive place for gays to work). Two consistent threads run throughout the book: the Sulzbergers' ambivalence over their Jewish heritage, and their determination to place journalistic excellence and family control of the paper over the business strategems and high profits necessary to please Wall Street.

This book will be of great interest to journalism junkies. But it also commends itself to all lovers of serious biography.

This massive chronicle of the Ochs-Sulzbergers and their stewardship of the New York Times gets off to a fascinating start, dramatizing Adolph Ochs' purchase of the then nothing New-York Times and detailing his wildly successful efforts to build a paper of note.

But once Ochs vanishes from the narrative, bequeathing the editorship to son-in-law Arthur Sulzberger, the book slowly loses steam. Focus shifts from the newsroom to the myriad Ochs-Sulzberger relatives and their beside-the-Times activities, in response to which a reader can only offer a heartfelt shrug.

In defense of The Trust it has been pointed out that the authors set out to write about the family rather than the paper, but apparently there's little of inherent interest in the Ochs-Sulzbergers outside the Times. Down the backstretch, the authors seem as bored as the reader, dutifully recounting the gossipy infighting among far-flung cousins.

The Trust, excellent as much of it is, comes to seem unfortunately conceived -- the newsroom coverage is exemplary, but the beside the Times gossip grows quickly tiresome.