Reporter
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4.1 • 22 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
"Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. This book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over." —John le Carré
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author and preeminent investigative journalist of our time—a heartfelt, hugely revealing memoir of a decades-long career breaking some of the most impactful stories of the last half-century, from Washington to Vietnam to the Middle East.
Seymour Hersh's fearless reporting has earned him fame, front-page bylines in virtually every major newspaper in the free world, honors galore, and no small amount of controversy. Now in this memoir he describes what drove him and how he worked as an independent outsider, even at the nation's most prestigious publications. He tells the stories behind the stories—riveting in their own right—as he chases leads, cultivates sources, and grapples with the weight of what he uncovers, daring to challenge official narratives handed down from the powers that be. In telling these stories, Hersh divulges previously unreported information about some of his biggest scoops, including the My Lai massacre and the horrors at Abu Ghraib. There are also illuminating recollections of some of the giants of American politics and journalism: Ben Bradlee, A. M. Rosenthal, David Remnick, and Henry Kissinger among them. This is essential reading on the power of the printed word at a time when good journalism is under fire as never before.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The legendary investigative journalist forthe New York Times and the New Yorker recalls his struggles to uncover government secrets and get them printed in this powerful memoir. Hersh recounts his career unearthing epochal stories, from the 1968 massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American troops at My Lai and Watergate revelations to abuses at the Abu Ghraib military prison during the Iraq War. There's gripping journalistic intrigue aplenty as he susses out sources and documents, fences with officials, and fields death threats. His pursuit of My Lai perpetrator William Calley, which saw him barking bogus orders at soldiers and crawling through a Fort Benning barracks, feels like a Hollywood thriller. Almost as arduous are his efforts to get nervous editors to run incendiary articles while he navigated byzantine newsroom politics, especially his testy relationship with Times chief Abe Rosenthal, who emerges as a hybrid of courage and timidity. Along the way, Hersh paints pungent sketches of everyone from Henry Kissinger ("the man lied the way most people breathed") to the "ass-kissing coterie of moronic editors" at the Times who watered down a piece on corporate skulduggery. Hersh himself is brash and direct, but never cynical, and his memoir is as riveting as the great journalistic expos s he produced. Photos.
