Newspapers Books

Margaret Truman knows how to craft a novel and although the story of Joe Wilcox and his journalistic integry is put to question and makes for an interesting read, the book is absolutely riddled with cliche. Murder At The Washington Tribune is not an entirely bad read, albeit a bit slow and clunky at times. It has just enough to keep you interested and wondering. However ... ahhh ... as a reporter Joe Wilcox is virtually handed the name of the person who may have killed a young female reporter at the paper about 120 pages in, courtesy of the young women's parents. Wilcox never considers looking into this angle. Flew past him like a Roger Clemens fast ball. Twenty five years of crime reporting and what becomes a major clue goes unreported. Wilcox, the newspaper reporter has, of course, a beautiful daughter in television. Chalk another cliche up. Anyway, the dialog between the two is often pedestrian and dumb. They're constantly sharing sources for stories and get irritated with each other when one of two holds back information for their own employer. As I think about it, there's another cliche at every page. Wilcox' boss is a "tough" Metro News Editor in constant need of the latest scoop. Cliche. Wilcox' wife is a stay-at-homer, all too eager to please and have dinner cooked when he arrives home. Cliche. The main female police officer investigating the murders has a life so cliche -- failed marriage, amazing good looks, high morality -- that she could be a piece of swiss cheese. Cliche. Then, there's the long lost brother whose past creates the books sense of mystery, but he turns out to be medium spicy. You see everything he does or is going to do coming a mile away. The last chapter of the book? CLICHE. Just read for yourself. The one redeeming part of this book is the issues facing newspapers across the country: Integrity. Revenue. The conflict between tabloid journalism and real news journalism. For exploring this angle, I give Ms. Truman thumbs up. For the rest of the book, cut the cliches.

I found myself pulled into this mystery. I've read a number of the Capital Crimes Series and feel this is one of the best ones that the author's written. I was guessing all the way until the end to figure out who the murderer was. I highly recommend this book. It is well written and the attention to detail was good without being overwhelming.

Susan K. Behm, author of The Journey, Secrets in Paradise, and Civilized Savages.

Margaret Truman is one of my favorite writers. I learn about DC politics and the city while getting a good yarn, and usually can't put them down. Unlike other mystery writers, I do not skip her words -- I do nto "speed read" but savor the whole book!

I found this book to be a bit of a departure from Truman's other novels and I have to say I really enjoyed it and found it to be a breath of fresh air. Not that Truman's other novels aren't spectacular, they really are! This book however is quite special in that the main character turns takes a path that strays away from the straight and narrow. With books where Mac Smith is the main character, we are used to him taking the high road, so this is definitely a departure from that way of thinking!

Joe Wilcox, a respected, but aging reporter finds himself in a moral dilemma when he has the opportunity to gain some fame in the autumn of his career. One thing leads to another and soon he finds himself losing is journalistic integrity in order to show up a young, hot shot reporter. To add further intrigue, someone from his past shows up on the scene that has a lot more to hide than the reader first realizes.

This complicated tale of deception and murder in the Nation's capitol should not be missed!

Murder at the Washington Tribune by Margaret Truman is not the worst book I've read this year (I'll reserve that dubious honor for Patricia Cornwell's Predator). And it's not even really that bad. It's just not that good either.

I have to applaud Ms. Truman for venturing away from her usual Washington series starring attorney Mac Smith and coming up with an entirely new set of characters for this novel. I generally enjoy her mysteries, with the combination of Washington insider intrigue, solid mystery writing, and good characters.

This book, however is not so much a mystery as a journey into the temptation of and subsequent fall from grace of a good man. As such, the mystery, the murder of a young journalist takes second place to the relationship between veteran news reporter Joe Wilcox, his daughter, hotshot television reporter Roberta Wilcox and MPD detective Edith Vargas-Swayze.

Also entering the mix is Joe's brother Michael, newly arrived in Washington after years spent in a mental institution after his killing of a teen-age girl. Truman mixes all these characters together, and tosses in a few other mysteries as well-- the murder of another reporter and the killing of an elderly veteran. Sometimes she loses some of the threads-- I don't believe the murder of the second reporter is ever solved, and the resolution of the murder of the first reporter is no big surprise-- the surprise is that no one tumbled to it sooner.

Ultimately the murders in this book are merely window dressing for the true story, which is the downfall of Joe Wilcox. There's nothing terribly wrong with that, however Ms. Truman could have given her story more oomf if she had devoted as much time and energy toward the mysteries as she did to Joe's story. As it is, the reader is left at the end feeling dissatisfied-- not only are all the questions not answered, but there just doesn't seem to have been any purpose to the whole book.

This book perfectly reflects the fact that in this particular part of the world, the long tongue means everything and what's actually behind that forehead bone means nothing. The Japanese hire based on their judgment on how good the person in question is. The Europeans hire based on their judgment on how good the person can eventually become. We hire based on our judgment on how good they can pretend to be. Isn't it nauseating?... Aren't we all becoming a little sick of paper superheroes, saviors of the world (environment, the poor, the Iraqis - substitute your own martyr)? Isn't it time to wipe out all our buzzwords and favorite cliches and just focus on results?..

Over time, the essays may become stale, so a regular update to this fluid topic is necessary. However, every essay is a worthwhile read for structure and for content. The most important take-away: what NOT write in an essay.

there are other books that tell you the whole process of applying and preparing your apps. you should get one of those but also get this one. this is one of its kind. it's a small book with some really great essays. exactly what i needed. it's easy to get confused in the whole process of preparing apps; selection of schools, school visits, selecting and talking to recommenders etc. and if you start reading tips of what to write and what not write in your essays, you can easily spend weeks just browsing the internet and taking notes.

this book will give you a good headstart for your essays.

This book is good, but not great. I would recommend this as a good 2nd or 3rd book to have. Start of with Robert Montauk, as it will provide better context for this this book.

Another thing to note is that thhese are not 65 complete applications, rather 65 essays. I was a little bummber when I realized that.

This talks about essays which can win you prizes in the creative essay contests..but as far a s admission in today's world into MBA college is concerned..far from reality..

DONT BUY..!!..

Howard Cosell is a legend in the sports broadcasting business. If he wasn't a sports broadcaster, he could have easily been a terrific writer of fiction or non-fiction. It's easy to read this book if you are not a sports fan like myself. This book is about how he covered football including a chapter on MOnday Night Football. I enjoyed reading about his relationship with O.J. Simpson and how O.J. cried when he thought he lost his friendship. Cosell was like a mentor or second father figure to him. He writes about the strained relationship based on tabloid journalism. Monday Night Football is not the same without Cosell even now. His legendary stature as a sports broadcaster waves heavily on sports broadcasting today. He was one of the pioneers. Of course, there are other chapters about boxing, baseball, and football and stadium politics like when the New York Jets and New York Giants moved only few miles away to the Meadowlands in New Jersey that it was more like crossing the border into a foreign land. The book is well-written and you grow to like Cosell after awhile. You can't imagine him without his beloved wife, Emmy, or Mary Edith Abrams, who traveled with him all over the place. He couldn't imagine doing it without her.

Howard Cosell rose to fame talking mainly about boxing and football, and the bulk of this book is devoted to documenting his disenchantment with those sports. The lack of regulations protecting the safety of boxers seems to be behind his disenchantment with that sport. As for pro football, he recounts with considerable disgust the removal of franchises from cities that have supported them, and their transfer to more lucrative sites. The Colts went to Indianapolis (under cover of night), the Jets across the river to New Jersey (in fact he called them the "New Jersey Jets"), the Rams to Anaheim, and of course the Raiders went to Los Angeles after beating the pants off the NFL in the celebrated anti-trust case.

It is this latter case which I think is the pivotal point of Cosell's hot-and-cold relationship with pro football. He is dead-set against this type of blatant profiteering from a moral standpoint. He feels that the franchises owe something to the cities which have supported them, and he has testified before Congress in support of legislation that would require franchises to show good cause before moving.

At the same time, his former training as a lawyer required that he support the legal right of the Raiders to move. The legal issue in the case involved section 4.3 of the NFL By-Laws, which required the approval of 3/4 of the owners in the league for any franchise move. The owners could block a move without giving any reason whatsoever, and Cosell understood that this was a clear violation of the anti-trust laws. Despite this clear reality, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle stubbornly dug in his heels and fought, instead of simply modifying the rule so that it would no longer violate anti-trust standards. Rozelle, one of the most over-rated characters in modern history, refused to accept Cosell's support of the Raiders' legal right to move, and it caused a rift in their personal relationship.

Another factor in Cosell's disenchantment with football is what he called the "jockocracy", meaning the use of ex-ballplayers in the telecasts. He blasts the talents of former colleagues Don Meredith and Frank Gifford, and it is these comments which became the focal point of most of the reaction to this book. That is not, however, the main thrust of the book.

I always liked Howard Cosell and appreciated his special brand of sports journalism, a phrase that was basically an oxymoron before Cosell came along. It is clear now that this book represents the start of the deterioration which he went through in his later years. He starts trashing others, a habit which grew and grew as he grew old. He decided he now liked baseball after all, after trashing it severely earlier. However, his efforts to broadcast baseball were excruciatingly awful. I have to cringe when I think of his horrible effort as part of the ABC telecast of the 1979 World Series between the Pirates and the Orioles. He was temperamentally unsuited for baseball, and this was painfully obvious to the listener. In his last years Cosell burned many bridges behind him, and he no doubt died with the love of his family intact, but perhaps not many others.

I have this thing about men with toupees. It's like they're trying to hide something. But what? Did they strangle a unicorn when they were younger? Did they repeatedly run over a poodle with their Vespa? Did they hit a parrot on the head with a ball peen hammer? I doubt it. But it makes you wonder right?

Sportscaster Howard Cosell (1920-1995) was so annoying and obnoxious that millions of fans would turn off the sound on their TV sets. But away from the microphone Cosell was a capable print journalist who often wrote with great clarity and perspective. Here at his retirement Cosell writes about sports franchises relocating, problems within the NFL and boxing, sports announcers and Monday Night Football. Cosell makes several interesting points, but unfortunately his arrogance and ceaseless criticisms for his coworkers was such a turnoff that I never finished these pages. If you found Cosell as perfect as he apparently did, you'll probably enjoy this book and the author's unbounded egotism.

Howard Cosell takes on a variety of topics in 1985's bitter memoir "I Never Played The Game" but only really warms to one: Himself.

The voice of televised sports through the 1960s and especially the 1970s, Cosell was an original who with his characteristic staccato pontificating and taste for the jugular made even humdrum contests into events. Unfortunately by the 1980s his act had grown tired. Cosell lost interest in sports, especially boxing, where he shone brightest. That boxing was a dangerous sport was nothing new, but suddenly in 1982 Cosell discovered it caused serious injury, and not only walked away from the sport but urged it be banned outright. If he no longer enjoyed it, why should anyone else?

All this is covered in "I Never Played The Game" at sententious, self-important length. Cosell has a point he beats into the ground, and it's not so much the danger of boxing but how the sport's luminaries were shocked at his brave stand and how congressmen like Jim Florio and Bill Richardson listened attentively to Cosell's words.

Earlier in the book, Cosell details walking away from his other key perch, the broadcast booth of "Monday Night Football" in even more self-serving terms. He claims the players are no longer interesting (huh?), that the league is corrupt (especially when their leadership doesn't listen to him), that too many broadcasters are of what Cosell likes to call "the jockocracy," whose ability to call the game is compromised by the fact they once played it, unlike him.

"Anyone over the age of two knows that football is basically a sport without any mysteries," he writes, and his acid contempt for the game is matched only by that for his boothmates, Don Meredith and Frank Gifford, whom he describes as uninteresting morons who rode Cosell's grand wake.

This may be the book of Cosell's I heard Al Michaels once describe as "cruelty disguised as candor." If so, it fits. Cosell wants you to know how low he regards people like NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, New York Jets owner Leon Hess, and John Madden, but instead of making his points he keeps hammering at the people, noting such details as their failed marriages as he uses this book to burn some bridges and settle scores in a way that made me feel a little like he must have watching Larry Holmes pummel poor Tex Cobb. As another boxer famously cried: "No Mas!"

The only good part of the book is a chapter on the rise of Sugar Ray Leonard, a young boxer who gave Cosell a new star to light upon after the decline of Muhummad Ali, his most famous interview subject. Cosell's commentary here is relatively bile-free, and while he still pretty much promotes himself, he also writes knowledgeably about Leonard's growth as a boxer through a series of professional matches culminating in a memorable pair of bouts with Roberto Duran.

It's a shame that Cosell's writing doesn't rise to this level elsewhere in this book. He attacks newspaper critics for not recognizing his brilliance, takes credit not only for the success of "Monday Night Football" but pro football overall, and uses the controversy surrounding his description of a black football player as "a little monkey" (which was definitely overblown and if anything revealed Cosell's essential colorblindness rather than any hidden racism) as an excuse to trot out his credentials as Mr. NAACP, the best thing to happen to black people since the Emancipation Proclamation.

Cosell was a great thing to happen to sports broadcasting, and in his prime, when he took delight in himself and his place in pop culture, he was more of a pleasure to be around than any of us who were there at the time really knew. But it wasn't his time anymore when he wrote this, and instead of taking stock gracefully, he lets his bile run free. The result is a book that diminishes Cosell more than his critics ever could.

Jill Nelson is the modern day Harriet Tubman, leading the mentally enslaved from the chains of industrial oppression to the freedom of self-determined realization. If you read this missive and don't ask yourself if you've ever compromised your integrity to further someone else's capitalist agenda, you've missed the point of this brilliant body of work. Angst, inner turmoil, and introspection abound on the pages and tell the tale of a woman trapped in the web of office politics and backstabbing that eat at your joy, that erode your sense of self-worth. What is the price of voluntarily whitewashing your identity to please people with an agenda that does not validate or acknowledge the talents you bring to the table as a person of color? It's so much more than the reflections of a sista who got a position with the Washington Post who got a case of buyer's remorse and didn't like her job. This is the impetus to assess what it is that is important in life and to run towards freedom.

As an African-American journalist, I found Jill Nelson's book to be very real. Those who criticize the book because Nelson strikes them as naive are missing the point, on at least two levels.

In the first place, though she naturally gets into certain generalities, the book is primarily about HER experience. It's not intended to be a handbook for reporters who are climbing the corporate ladder. Given her past, and her particular personality, this is the story of how she happened to react to a specific set of circumstances. How one judges her actions should be different from the way someone judges the book itself.

And secondly, to the extent that the book does have a larger intent, it calls for the dismantling of an outrageously unfair system. Should we all just accept the status quo, and find clever ways to navigate our way past pettiness and stupidity, or strive for a sane alternative?

The fact is that Nelson has done just fine since she left the Post. Viewed in that context, the book is a testament to her courage, and her insistence on personal dignity.

The only other author I ever read who so effectively combined self-pity and wry humor was Erica Jong. Jill Nelson turns a wicked phrase and makes her characters and her situations jump to life. I laughed aloud at her description of her teenage daughter telling her "Mom, get a life!" in response to her lecturing about black conciousness. All through the book I kept wondering where Ms. Nelson's gripes came from. Because her dad left her mom for a white woman, as recounted in the book? She grew up in plush surroundings, with summers on Martha's Vineyard. As the number of unread pages shrank, I kept wondering if Ku Kluxers in white sheets were going to suddenly show up in the book to explain her bitter feelings about white males. Ms. Nelson said that white men are priveleged, but believe me, we too can be put through the grinder. I'm also a former newspaper reporter, born the same year as Ms. Nelson. When she complained about her reporting duries at the Washington Post, saying "I was too old to chase fire engines," I had to laugh. That's exactly what I was doing at another paper at the time she said that. I don't buy what Jill Nelson says, but I did enjoy the way she tells it.

Volunteer Slavery is STILL the book! Family, friends and coworkers are probably sick and tired of hearing me raving about the revealing, blistering and gossipy tell-all memoir! It's been nearly 10 years since the book was published, but I still regularly reread certain passages when I need inspiration, a good laugh, or a clearer understanding of the journalistic imbroglio with which I frequently have to deal with--after more than 15 years in the business!! Celebrate the anniversary of the BEST book EVER written about what it's REALLY like being a black journalist on the plantation...the newsroom at a daily newspaper!!

It is ironic yet predictable that most of the people who don't "get" this book, tend to be individuals who are either not female, African American or both. Jill Nelson wrote an honest critique of the experience that many African American women go through when trying to attain the proverbial golden rings in corporate America. I am sorry some folks could not relate or understand Ms. Nelson's book because the points she brings up are true and still reflective of the socialogical culture most African Americans live in today--approximately twenty years later. The patriarchal blindness that many in this culture experience that prevents them from understanding or relating to another individual or cultures experiences is sad yet expected The best that Ms. Nelson and other writers like her can do is just tell the story and let those who get "it" get it.

Were some of her experiences hard to hear? Most definitely. Were the experiences unique to her? Absolutely not. Ms. Nelson says on in chapter 2, that she has been doing the standard Negro balancing act which is "blurring the edges of [her] being so that they [white people] don't feel intimidated." There are few African Americans, I would venture to guess, who haven't experienced this feeling at one time or another, yet it is virtually impossible to communicate this experience in a way that is understandable to someone who hasn't had to always be "aware" of how they are perceived and how those perceptions can affect other African Americans as well. Ms. Nelson does an excellent job explaining these details and if some people are still clueless, well, it's through no fault of her skill as a writer.

Keep on shedding a spotlight on these issues Ms. Nelson. There are a few out there who are truly looking for the light.

From 1956 to 1970, before the days of Dan Rather on CBS, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley said "good night" to each other at the 'finis' of NBC network news, leaving everybody watching feeling a kind of contentment that "all's right with the world." After his first eighteen years spent growing up, working for the small town newspaper, in North Carolina, his tenure fin the world of television news saw him through four wars, three assassinations, two wives, twenty-two political conventions, eleven presidents, 2,000 weeks of canvassing and reporting the news to the American public and one moon landing, he is on terra firma at last. Born in Wilmington, and educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee, he spent most of his life on the Washington, D.C. scene. He had a soft Southern drawl and a knack for brevity, using just the right word or phrase to sum up a situation. This memoir as such is mostly about politics and his role as observer of the leaders then and now.

He was in the press corps. "Even though I was in Washington covering the White House for the last years of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency and reported from the White House every day when there was any news and traveled with him on several trips, we only knew, as everyone knew, the U. S. Treasury paid him one hundred thousand dollars a year." Perhaps no form of governments needs great leaders so much as democracy. The political history of the 20th century lists six men as the best leaders: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. The first four were tyrants; had it not been for the final two, western civilization might have perished.

In March 1946, Harry S. Truman's private pullman, the 'Ferdinand Magellan,' passed on to him after Roosevelt's death, on a private train at Washington's Union Station pulled out with his guest, Winston Churchill, his press secretary, Charles Ross, and others as the Truman-Churchill Express to St. Louis. Churchill was noted for writing his own speeches and used Lord Byron as a part of this particular appeal: "He who ascends to mountain tops shall find the loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow.
He who surpasses or subdues mankind must look down on the hate of those below.
Though far above the sun of glory shine and far beneath the earth and ocean spread round him are icy rocks
And fiercely blow contending tempests on his naked head
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led."

David had grown up watching the Tennessee Williams' plays and movies about the South with its drunkenness and cruelty. "I survived early radio at NBC, and it survived me. The grand old names in radio never made it in television." There had been only one 100-wattt AM radio station in the small town of Wilmington He called a spade a spade. His sister Mary Driscoll worked as legal secretary for Joseph McCarthy, who he called the "Grand Champion American Liar." He routinely pronounced "him to be what he was, a loudmouthed liar." He said, "had he been truthful, ...he might have been a great political figure. But it was only one lie after another...."

The 1956 Democrat Convention was the first he covered. Adlai Stevenson from Illinois was the candidate to run for that party's choice for U. S. President. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee was chosen with the help of Al Gore's dad, Senator Albert Gore, as Vice President. They lost. The 1960 election used "multimillion-dollar mainframe computers bigger than four-door Buicks" to count the votes.

He wasn't impressed by President Nixon ("Before Nixon was forced to resign the presidency, he chose Spiro Agnew as his vice president, only to begin still another degrading and humiliating episode in American presidential politics."). He observed, "While eight years later, Nixon was one of the most intelligent presidents of modern times, he never seemed happy or seemed to enjoyed what he was doing. He always looked mournful and it is difficult to find a photo of him with a smile on his face." He didn't have anything good to say about Agnew, Gerald Ford, or Jimmy Carter. He called Eisenhower the Republican party's first president in twenty years. At the 1964 Convention, the agenda had them denouncing the John Birch Society, an even harder-line right-wing fringe group, along with the klan, and the Communist party."

This memoir was just a beginning; David Brinkley also wrote EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION and BRINKLEY'S BEAT: PEOPLE, PLACES AND EVENTS THAT SHAPED MY TIME.

Having grown up with the Huntley-Brinkley report and watching them at all the conventions, I truly enjoyed this book. Especially interesting is how Brinkley trashes Jesse Helms.

As a non-native English speaker who has been watching ABC's "This Week" all these years, I've always found David Brinkley's manner of speaking concise and easy to understand with short sentences and simple vocabulary. This was far cry from many other loud talking heads, including David's own colleagues on his Sunday program. He taught me how English could be spoken plainly but precisely and effectively. His memoir is written exactly the way he spoke. He gets to the point without being wordy and beating around the bush.
One thing I liked about this memoir is that he wrote more about his professional life than personal, which was of little interest to me. This memoir is also a history of American TV journalism, filled with episodes that were new to me. I was particularly interested in learning what he had to say about Joe McCarthy, whom David's own sister served as secretary for many years. Quite a bit is written about Kenndey brothers, too, including JFK assasination. So glad he published this memoir before he passed away.

I was quite excited to get David Brinkley's book, as I have enjoyed his newscasts for years, particularly the early conventions. As it turns out, this is a "Chatty-Cathy" book that rambles on about his life, with his TV persona somewhat as an afterthought. The book is quite readable with his enjoyable laconic style, but at the end, you don't know much more about him, TV, the process of TV news, or the events to which he was an eyewitness....at least not more than you already knew or could surmise.
The book was a pleasant interlude, but somewhat a bit of froth

To me, Brinkley always seemed a cut above the modern TV journalist / anchor -- more sober, more professional and less interested in focusing the attention on himself rather than his subject.

David Brinkley tells his life story in this quick book. Growing up with the new medium of television, he and his partner (Chet Huntly) wrote much of the playbook for the way network news and tv interview shows are conducted.

This is an interesting story that tells not only of Brinkley's growth and development but also of the maturation of the tv news industry. Along the way, Brinkley was witness to many seminal events and has of course met many of the notables of his era.

The man's integrity and dedication to the profession of journalism shines through in this book. I can't imagine Sam or Cokie or Dan or Peter writing this book. Too much would be devoted to image and the their impact on the news. Brinkley was able to achieve the incredible credibility he enjoyed because he was made of different stuff -- this is the story of a darn good journalist who understood the difference between covering the news and entering it.

If you enjoy reading witty, amusing personal ads, then this is not it. Buy the London Review of Books Personal Ad collection one, its called They Call Me Naughty Lola or something similar, much funnier, relevant and interesting. I bought this book but wish I had read the reviews before doing so. Blah blah its an interesting look at history and how things have changed but not for a hundred pages of uninteresting drivel. Could barely start the book let alone finish it.

I loved this book! It might be better titled "The Best and Worst OF Personal Ads of All Time," as it aptly demonstrates the best and worst OF people, well, through time. People represent themselves and their desires in a particular way in personal ads. They always reflect something true, whether it be the truth of what they are looking for, the norms of the time, or what they think their potential mates want to see. This collection captures that, and what's more- its funny! Some things about us change, and others stay the same through the years. Check out my favorite, "The Result of a 'Personal'."

Online dating sites and [...] advertisements and TV shows like Blind Date or The Love Connection are really nothing new. Personal ads have been with us for nearly 300 years. In Man with Farm Seeks Woman with Tractor Laura Schaefer collects almost 200 examples of the genre, most dating to the 19th and early 20th centuries, and most having appeared originally in English and US publications. Schaefer divides the ads among eleven chapters by type--the self-deprecating or desperate, the poetic, the downright bizarre, and so on.

As with any collection of this sort, the majority of the texts selected for inclusion will probably fail to interest any given reader, and readers will differ in which of the ads included most appeal to them. But among the ho-hum here that didn't spark my interest are some true gems. For example: a 19-year-old GI writing in 1946 to ask for pen pals; the parents of a sickly 21-year-old looking to attach their daughter to some benevolent doctor; a 70-year-old, castle-owning German baron in the market for a very particular sort of 16- to 20-year-old girl; notice that a lisping, one-legged wife has run away with the parish priest; a man with a glass eye looking for a woman "who also has a glass eye or some other deformity not more severe." My own favorites in Schaefer's collection are those ads that offer a snapshot of real life, recording some small unremarkable moment long lost to memory. What can have transpired between these two on a London street, for example, to prompt such interest?

"A LADY WHO passed a Gentleman on Monday, the 17th of this month in Hart-street, Bloomsbury, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, without speaking to him, is anxious for an opportunity of seeing him again, any time after the 7th of January."
-- December 25, 1810,
The Times (London)

More than a century later, more than an ocean away, another chance encounter was memorable to at least one of the parties concerned:

"LADY WHOSE CAR ticket was refused by conductor on S. Meridian car, Friday, June 20 at 7 a.m. wishes to communicate with gentleman who witnessed the refusal. DRexel 5056."
--June 26, 1924,
Indianapolis Star

In some cases one wants desperately to know how the advertisers fared in their quests.

The personals are surely a rich source of social history. Certainly they reflect their times, young widows and widowers apparently being thick on the ground in the 19th century, and the contracting of relationships hinging very often on the quantifiable resources one could muster--whether a yearly stipend or a tractor. It is also interesting to note that the dangers inherent in forming relationships by mail, electronic or traditional, are not new, and neither is the discussion over the desirability of doing so.

Schaefer's book is a quick read, and many of her selections are excellent. There are times when I would have liked her to provide additional context for her selections. Murders committed by men placing personal ads are alluded to on two occasions, for example, and one would like very much to know more about these cases. It would also be interesting--though I realize this isn't the book Schaefer set out to write--if the author had researched what is known of the subsequent history of at least some of the advertisers featured: that elderly, castle-wielding baron must have left his mark in the record books, for example. But Man with Farm Seeks Woman with Tractor is recommended as a quick and interesting read and as a window into what seems to be a rich vein of historical information.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

I read an article reviewing this book and was so excited to check it out. When I looked through the book I was dissapointed at how "light" it was in content. Deciding to give it a try I read the first 20 pages at least and found the book extremely boring - so boring in fact that I've given up. The "personal ads" are not very funny or entertaining, just basic and dry. I honestly don't even want to give it to someone else and will probably end up throwing it away. Don't waste your money.

I ordered this book on a whim and have since given to 5 people for Birthday, Valentine Days, Appreciation gifts etc. Its one of those fun books to have around and flip through. Visitors to my home always end up paging through it and readig out loud. It's also a stress free way of learning some history. What better way to catch on to the social and romantic mores of the time than reading a personal add written by vast array of people!? I recomend this book if your looking for a fun gift, or conversation starter.

I started this book with the conviction that I would finally learn what had made Tina Brown such a feared and respected editor. Unfortunately, when I finished it I was somewhat disappointed. Judy Bachrach certainly does a good job of finding disaffected former employees who dish out all sorts of dirt on Tina Brown and detail working practices and habits which seem to have caused her underlings some serious grief. But what I did not really learn was what exactly why she was brought across from London to edit first Vanity Fair and then the New Yorker. She was clearly not a charlatan, she clearly had talents, but the use to which she put them is obscured by the dirt and nastiness regularly dumped all over Brown by other people quoted in this book. As a reader of the New Yorker for the last 15 years I can say that she did indeed change it, in many ways for the better. I still have some of my old pre-Brown copies of the magazine and while they do contain the occasional excellent articles, there are also many long, long screeds about fruitflies and tomatoes and some obscure aspect of baseball which were allowed to ramble on and on. Whatever faults she may have had, Tina Brown at least turned the magazine into something I wanted to read and actually looked forward to every week. She did make mistakes (as the book makes clear) and I agree with critics who say the Diana issue was extremely ill-judged, but the magazine now is in many ways a sorry shadow of what it once was. It saddens me to say that I look forward to Harper's and Atlantic Monthly with more anticipation than I do the New Yorker. The one area where the magazine has really collapsed is the fiction section, where whoever is in charge seems to have completely given up. Almost every week it's the same thing, exceedingly well-known names writing variations on the same themes, be it Alice Munro or William Trevor or whoever else it might be. What happened to the magazine's fine old tradition of unearthing new authors? I note that Zadie Smith is now going to be writing a story for the magazine, which is a good thing, but it would have been more impressive had the magazine published her before the success of "White Teeth". Yes, there has been the odd New Fiction issue with a few new authors, but I can think of no area where the New Yorker has collapsed so miserably as in fiction. So do read Bachrach's book if you have an interest in Tina Brown and Harry Evans but don't expect an answer to all your questions.

Hi there and apologies for bothering you. Judy Bachrach has contacted me to point out that when I say an anecdote was repeated twice at the start of the book, I should in fact have said an entire quote. I know this sounds like splitting hairs, but she seems a little perturbed by this and so if you could change the review to make it 100 percent accurate I'd be very grateful. Many thanks in advance for your understanding.

David Ljunggren

This book is a nasty, in a sophistiacated 1930s sort of way. Think, Clare Booth Luce's "The Women". This book is the story of an unrelenting social climber who had genuine talent and ability on her side but little grace, humility or kindness. And it caught up with her. The book does a good job of showing why Ms. Brown has so many enemies and why she rose to such starry heights in the first place. It's great for people who love NYC, or who love journalism, or anyone who just wants a juicy piece of shameless gossip.

journalism and its practice isn't really everybody's top interest, but this is one of the best books i've ever read. tina brown is the editor of our generation, and how she did it is of compelling interest to women in journalism everywhere. one way she did it was by writing what can only be called faye wray journalism in the 1970s -- something invented by older blondes on this side of the atlantic. it makes for a great read, and it helped both of them find rich mentors. that's part of the way the world is, and this book is exactly about that, including the anti-semitism of britain (tina is one-fourth jewish) and how when she could not conquer british society as she wished, tina chose to conquer hollywood. (her father, whom she loved, was a B-movie producer.) how she persuaded media mogul s.i. newhouse to fund her money-losing yet spectacular rise is suggested (let's just say blondeness is involved). the biography of her husband, harry evans, is as compelling as tina's -- almost d. h. lawrence -- starting out sexually compulsive as the crusading editor in some polluted northern england rust belt town. how tina has mined her older husband's gift for graphics is displayed. i loved the roseanne issue of the new yorker which all the white boys hated. roseanne is tina and tina is roseanne. and i'll wager (were i a bettin' man) that that's why people hate this book. you need to read it. tina (along with katharine graham and princess diana) was a captain of the girl team. and this is how she got there. cover 'em up if you got 'em.

WHAT did Tina Brown do to Judy Bachrach? That's really the question you keep asking yourself while reading this bitchy if amusing book. Not that Ms Brown and Mr Evans don't deserve quite a bit of the stick they get here, but it is so... unrelenting. Judy Bachrach now works for Tina Brown's successor at Vanity Fair, and she applies to Tina and Harry the gossipy techniques which made VF's success. She should have applied fuller disclosure to her motives.

That being said, most details here are probably accurate. Thebook is not published in the UK for fear of libel suits. Not very sportsmanlike of Tina and Harry.

The title should have been "How Your Articles Should Look" The book is a good read... It will get the "creative" juices flowing. Through article examples, the book shows you different methods on how your articles should look. If you're searching for a book that goes into the mechanics of article writing, this book is not it.

Maybe I just didn't "get it." More likely my expectations were different than what the author intended. I was expecting "hundreds of ideas to spark my creativity" but got the same number of examples from Harpers, New Yorker, WSJ, Time and just about every other publication known to man, or so it seems. Yes I read some good, actually great, writing examples, but it never came together nor did I get the points being made. Perhaps I'll let it sit on the shelf a while and try again another day. For now, my recommendation is to pick up "How to Write Articles for Newspapers and Magazines" - more information in half the number of pages.

This book was totally the opposite of what I was expecting - namely, practical down-to-earth steps in preparing a magazine article. Instead, it was filled with samples that could be called "motivational" but not the practical tips I seeking. I found the "Writer's Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing" by Jean Frederette to be much more of the nuts and bolts that I was looking for. Perhaps a more experienced writer would appreciate the powerful examples in this book; however, as a novice I need to know more tecnique than theory. My book will be shoved to the back of the bookcase for now.

Not much more than a collection of anecdotes. Don't expect to learn much here. The section on interviewing, for instance, gives a couple of stories, then a brief guideline, with such original gems as "ask intelligent questions". Nothing on how to find the people to interview, how to connect with them, whether and what you should expect to pay, or how to actually conduct the interview.

I'm halfway through this book and already have found ways to improve my writing. Copious examples that detail the text. I particulairly found the topic of story structure interesting - something which I had no previous knowledge.

I am still waiting for this item to ship, which does not make me very happy.

If you are a writer at a community newspaper and suddenly find your publication has adopted Pagemaker to save time and labor costs in putting text files and graphics or advertising into layout, this is a great book for you.

If you have decided to publish your own magazine or newsletter and are a writer instead of an artist, this is a MUST book for you.

If, however, you are an experienced Pagemaker user, depending on your expertise, this book may or may not help you.

I am well experienced in Pagemaker (since beta version 1.0), yet I still found lots of helpful information, particularly in Chapter 9, Scripts and Tagged Text.

Gordon Woolf also has a website for book purchasers to download templates. A nice bonus.

This is an excellent book for anybody wanting to learn how to make the most efficient use of the great product from Adobe.

Back in early 1985, I was working in a university which was PC heaven. I knew nothing about computers until a salesman came to demonstrate a funny beige box with a tiny screen which, he said, would *soon* have a program called PageMaker running on it that we could use to produce publications, including my particular bete noir -- the university handbook (catalog).
To the horror of the PC jocks, I bought a suite of 4 "Fat Macs" and a LaserWriter for my office, and when PageMaker v.1 turned up I began setting up to produce the handbook. It was a steep learning curve. In the end, though, we made it.
I wish 'Publication Production using PageMaker ...' had been available then. Sure, the PageMaker manual was there, and it was good, but it focused on the program. Gordon Woolf's book is different -- it is a book about producing publications first ... and using PageMaker v.7, the current version and the one I now use, to do the job. The book you want to publish is the focus -- PageMaker is merely the tool.
And that's the point -- this is a book written by an old publishing pro about how to get the publishing job done. Gordon tells us he started desktop publishing when typewriters, monospaced type, physical paste-up and spirit duplicators were still the go. As computers developed and publishing programs appeared, so Gordon moved up the scale. His book follows the same path -- it assumes nothing except that you know how to click a mouse and tap on a keyboard, it focuses on the job, and it tells you how to do the job -- step by step.
The magic of this book, though, is that while it opens up a whole new world for publishing novices, it is also teaching lots of PageMaker (and general DTP) techniques.
I have been using PageMaker on a daily basis for longer than Gordon, I believe, but browsing through the book, I found lots of tips and tricks I have been able to incorporate into my workflow. I feel no shame at using Gordon's book to repair my deficiencies -- Gordon Woolf is a widely acknowledged PageMaker and DTP guru!
'Publication Production using PageMaker' is on my bookshelf and is in the "well thumbed" category!

The other reviews are very misleading in that it is not a comprehensive how-to on the entire program, as it only covers matters of production in tabloid-formats and newspaper layouts. There is little to no coverage of any other types of publications that can be created using the program, and the langauge is NOT geared toward novices.

This book is not what I anticipated. If you are somewhat familiar with Pagemaker it is a breeze. I waited for the mail daily just to receive a book that can't even help me. I ended up at the library checking out a 10 year old book that is still more effective in teaching me step by step instructions. It is called "Pagemaker 5.0 for Windows" it is 2 editions earlier but helps way better than this thing!

Yes, there are many glaring omissions, and yes, the prices of many of the records are laughably low. This book's value, however, lies in its cataloging of many popular "alternative" bands from 1976-1996.

Even if you never find them for the prices Neely has listed, at least you'll be able to find out the number 45s Rage Against the Machine released or how many pressings of "Pick Your King" Posion Idea released and which ones were on what colored vinyl.

Admittedly, you could probably find all of the information in the book with some searching online, but there's nothing like having an old fashioned paperback with all the information in it right by your side. Requires no electricity, pries you away from the evils of the addicting internet, and just perhaps will shed light on a group or record you didn't know existed.

And, hey, it's $1.99 from the Amazon Marketplace. How can you pass it up?

Tim Neely is very clear in his Intro (or Disclaimer, if you will) that this book is a guide only and could not include many artist. His Intro addresses most of the negative reviews listed for this book. I liked the book and it proved useful to me. Yes, after almost 10 years it should be updated. Thank You.

Lotsa errors, omissions and inaccuracies. There's about as much chance of finding some of the Misfits singles for the prices listed in this guide as there is for the Boulder police to ever solve the Jon Bennet Ramsey murder.

This book is the only one of it's kind that I know of...I think it needs to be updated soon though...it is a 1996 pricing guide..Also, it does need some adds on the artist listings section and a CD guide would be great too. It is the only book that I have found that has what I need for Alternative Rock vinyl listings.

I really was very dissapointed in the range of music that this book covers. I was hoping to get at least a decent discography of many of these bands, but this volume failed even that test. Having listened to this music in the 1970's and 80's into the 90's and beyond, I take offense to the many glaring ommissions that the author made either by choice or poor research. A few examples are: Psychic TV, Primus, the Muffs, amd Cyprus Hill are a few bands that did not make the cut at all. Steve Albini's original band Big Black is ommited but his 90's band Rapeman is represnted, go figure! (Probobly because by this time he had produced bands like Nirvana, even though Big Black is by far the more influential of his bands) Other bands have only a token mention with only one or two of their discs listed. Examples: Didjits, Naked Raygun, Fugazi, etc. Even more popular acts like Elvis Costello may have his LP's well listed but his Stiff records 45's are completely ignored, likewise Joy Division and the Specials also are poorly represented in the singles department. Especially frustrating to those who grew up with this music is the author's choice to include such modern pop-rock monstrosities as Hootie and the Blowfish and Blues Traveler and other such bands which might find a fine home on most adult contemporary radio stations but can not in any good conscience be considered 'Alternative'. Also if you go into any finer used record store you might be a bit surprised at some of the prices. While the vast majority of record prices have remained constant, he is well off on many of the rarer issues. In conclusion it seems that the author has a real shallow understanding of the heart and soul of the variety of musical forms that are collectively entitled 'Alternative', his viewpoint seems to be that of a contemporary mainstream rock station's music director, strong on the 90's rock but excedingly weak on the roots.