Topic: Book Reviews

News From Iraq: From Spinning to Reporting
After working as Central Command’s spokesman for the war in Iraq, Josh Rushing became a reporter for Al Jazeera and writes about his transformative journey.
By Edward A. Gargan

The Making of an Obituary Writer — And a Man
‘My words gave readers thousands of moments to remember of little lives well-lived.’
By Jim Nicholson

Predicting Digital Media Challenges Is Not Difficult
A newspaper journalist reflects on a book in which many problems are proclaimed, but hard thinking about solutions remains elusive.
By Cameron McWhirter

Debunking the Myth of Liberal Media Bias
A journalist and author finds an enfeebled Washington press corps, more concerned with retaining personal access than serving the public interest.
By Barry Sussman

Doing an Unenviable Job in an Enviable Way
A former ombudsman and media critic describes what Daniel Okrent wrote as public editor and what he has to say about the job he did.
By Mark Jurkowitz

Journalism: Its Generational Passage
Samuel G. Freedman ‘urges young journalists to be independent thinkers in newsrooms filled with consensus and conformity.’
By Brent Walth

Lessons of Youth Shape a Writer’s Career
In his memoir, a sportswriter observes his life and times as he delves into issues deserving of journalists’ attention.
By Jim Kaplan

Rethinking Foreign Correspondents' American Dream
‘No foreign news organization has the access, sources or resources to enable them to operate in the same league as domestic journalists.’
By Samuel Rachlin

Foreign Correspondence: Old Practices Inform New Realities
‘Evelyn Waugh’s book can’t be read without thinking of today’s wars and how reporters cover them.’
By Cameron McWhirter

The Lure of China
‘… we need to find a way to be both passionate about a subject and dispassionate about its effects and influences on our own country.’
By David D. Perlmutter

Type Creates a Visual Signature for Newspapers
‘In a marketplace where content and quality once drove consumer decisions, the newspaper now competes visually in a design-savvy, 24-hour free-information age.’
By Ally Palmer

Journalists Portray a Complex, Self-Destructive Texas Politician
Two reporters encounter roadblocks in telling the flamboyant story of Bob Bullock.
By Dave McNeely and Jim Henderson

Loud Noises, Sharp Elbows, and Impolitic Questions
A former editorial writer examines why the inquisitive, argumentative and forceful voice of journalists is quieter these days.
By Jim Boyd

Revisiting the Vanguard of Women Journalists
‘… we didn't get jobs, pay raises, or choice assignments because of our gender.’
By Kay Mills

Connecting the Threads of Democracy and Journalism
‘Too often, the decision—based on expedience and expenditure—to publish what is popular or entertaining trumps what is necessary.’
By Gerald B. Jordan

Reporting on the White House From the Outside In
‘If reporters entrusted to cover the White House know we are in the midst of a “truth-deficient” environment, what is the most responsible way to do our work?’
By Amy Goldstein

Finger-Wagging at Journalists Doesn’t Illuminate the Problem
‘What we need—and this attempt doesn’t satisfy—is insight into how all of this
By Doug Struck

The Life and Times of a Female Foreign Correspondent
A British reporter writes about reporting from war zones and overseas assignments—and adds marriage and motherhood into the mix.
By Mary Jordan

TV News: When the Networks Were In Their Prime
During the 1960’s and 1970’s, the CBS Washington bureau—including Roger Mudd, who now writes about it—led the way for broadcast journalism.
By Bill Wheatley

Editorial Cartooning: Tradition, Timidity and Transition
Missing from a lot of cartooning ‘is Mauldin’s sense of righteous indignation.’
By Chris Lamb

The Internet: How It Changes Everything About Journalism
‘What was once an important role—making editorial choices—starts to feel more like a bottleneck in the system.’
By Joshua Benton

Correcting the Errors of Our Ways
‘By ignoring readers’ pleas for accuracy and accountability, journalists are
By Greg Brock

‘A Voice, a Brain, and a Notebook’
Bloggers have taken up where I.F. Stone left off, and journalists shouldn't be far behind.
By Dan Froomkin

A New Approach to Reaching Young Audiences
Journalists offer well-told stories to teenagers — tailoring the content to suit their reading appetites and enticing them to perhaps find their way to news reporting.
By Judy Stoia

Well-Chosen Words Can Weave Tangled Webs
An increasingly important job of political journalists is to ‘unmask the tricksters.’
By Jules Witcover

Iraq’s Emerging Press
Providing the public with ‘accurate, complete and fair information was, and remains for most, an unknown concept.’
By Maggy Zanger

Bringing Iraqi Voices Into the Conversation About Their Country
A Washington Post correspondent’s book ‘is not a policy screed or a compilation of talking heads and experts.’
By Patrick J. McDonnell

The Ties That Bind: Newspapers and Nonfiction Books
What reporters do in their daily reporting can become the foundation for compelling storytelling in a book. So what happens when newsrooms shrink and support for long-term beat assignments dries up?
By Melissa Ludtke

Using Strength of Evidence to Tell a Powerful Story About Torture
‘… there’s still an odd disconnect between the issues about which she’s done such superb reporting and the lack of informed public debate about them.’
By Tom Ehrenfeld

The Rights and Responsibilities of Journalists
In his new book, Anthony Lewis offers a ‘cogent, yet complete accounting of some of the most searing issues that have faced journalists over the past decade.’
By Joel Kaplan

Blending Economic Ideas With the Persuasive Power of Journalism
Galbraith ‘performed that balancing trick as well as it has been done.’
By John Geddes

When Media Create the Message
The author of ‘Mediated’ makes us ‘feel as if our very beings are enslaved by the messages as well as the messengers.’
By Howard Shapiro

Opinion’s Place in Journalism
Victor S. Navasky explains why he loathes objectivity and values ‘critical opinion.’
By Ray Jenkins

Time and Techniques Define A ‘New New Journalism’
Conversations with writers reveal how and why their stories are being told in different ways.
By Madeleine Blais

Going to War With a Camera as Artillery
With war photography, ‘similar themes emerge; even the fields and faces can start to appear to be the same.’
By David Leeson

Journalists and Neighbors: Mehren and Harris
By Elizabeth Mehren

Demonstrating the Craft of Writing
A book ‘grounds the reader in practical improvement by presenting 50 sharp, focused “tools.”’
By Tom Ehrenfeld

Peering Deep Into the Essence of Small-Town Life
A photographer returns to Oxford, Iowa after 20 years to take pictures of its residents again, and his images share space with their words.
By Madeleine Blais

Urgent Issues the Press Usually Ignore
A focus on smaller stories ‘too often fails to connect the proverbial dots and avoids too much digging into or interpreting the larger picture.’
By Danny Schechter

Teaching Multimedia Journalism
Online resources—many of them free of charge—are used as the textbooks for training the next generation of journalists.
By Rebecca MacKinnon

Intimidation and Convictions of Journalists
Journalist Robert Shelton told a 1950’s Senate subcommittee it was ‘engendering the fear that soon it will be looking into newsrooms all over the country.’
By Morton Mintz

Journalists as Storytellers
To tell stories in the digital age, reporters and editors and photojournalists need to acquire new skills—and do so with passion.
By edition

Journalism 2.0—And Then What?
A book introduces journalists to multimedia storytelling tools, and someone who has used it offers a guide to navigating its lessons.
By Christine Gorman

The Humanity of Journalism
‘As journalists, we make moral and subjective choices all of the time, just like the people we cover.’
By Brent Walth

Collective Power—Photographs From the War in Iraq
In two books by photojournalists, words and images explore various dimensions of the experience of being a witness to war.
By Molly Bingham

Disgraced By a Story That Consumed Them
‘I began to understand why some mistrust the news media.…’
By Mary C. Curtis

Optimism in a Time of Chaos and Change
‘I have faith that new models of journalism are going to fly out of this whirlpool of change and be successful.’
By Robert J. Rosenthal

Why a Critical Eye Is Needed
In exploring why journalism matters, it is not enough to look at what works well; examine, too, why sometimes it fails.
By David Randall

Hidden Codes and Competitive Trickery
In a coffee-table book, Associated Press correspondents and photographers describe what they and their colleagues did to be first with the news.
By Robert H. Phelps

The Civil Rights Struggle and the Press
A book revisits the time when only a few brave voices in the Southern press stood up against the many ‘that supported and often led massive resistance to change.’
By Mary C. Curtis

Georgian Journalists Send Word of Their Fate
‘The situation is insane.… My friends—both journalists—were killed in Ossetia. Just confirmed that..am devastated..’
By Karl Idsvoog

The Life and Times of Foreign Correspondents in Russia
A book explores the work of covering Russia through the experiences and words of those reporters who did it.
By Alvin Shuster

The Role Women Journalists Played in Poland’s Freedom
Only when Solidarity won did the journalists realize ‘… they had formed the only all-woman cabal in Poland to make a counterstrike against martial law.’
By Peggy Simpson

Childhood Experiences Shape a Reporter’s Journey
‘The great writers he’d discovered in the library at the orphanage became midwives to his talent.’
By Lester Sloan

Political Journalism: It’s Not the Good Old Days
‘But some of what ails American political journalism in our time is an overreaction to the failures of the boys back in Witcover’s heyday.’
By David Yepsen

‘Plunder’ Explores What Happens When an Important Story Is Poorly Told
‘In retrospect, editors and reporters should have looked more carefully and consistently at the consequences of deregulation on Wall Street and Main Street.’
By Susan E. Reed

The Silent Takeover of American Journalism
‘… realistic solutions to the problems newspaper editors face nowadays are elusive as best.’
By Gilbert Cranberg

Probing the Successes and Failures of the Washington Press Corps
‘Great reporting in Washington is about cutting through the bureaucratic maze.’
By James McCartney

The Middle East Conflict: American Coverage
‘… Dunsky’s book is at its best when she reveals little-known aspects of the relationship that exists between American journalists and their government.’
By Simon Wilson

The Unchanging Essence of War Photography
The image’s power rests ‘in the hands of intrepid, artistically gifted photojournalists who travel to trouble and assemble what they find without written commentary.’
By Peter Osnos

Secrets and the Press
‘Some secrets deserve to be kept, and even secrets uncovered might not merit being put in public print, on television or on the Internet.’
By Walter Pincus

Public Service Pulitzers: How These Stories Were Told
Reporters’ experiences ‘remind journalists why they are in their business and inform the rest of the world how the mission of the press fits into society.’
By Elizabeth Mehren

‘Coloring the News’ Collides With Journalists
‘… too many of those with heavy investments in the diversity crusade either read my arguments wrong or preferred not to review their investments.’
By William McGowan

‘Baghdad Blues: A War Diary’
A photojournalist documents daily life during war.
By David Turnley

The Missourian: A Unique Approach to Teaching Journalism
‘All journalism schools have trouble reconciling vocational goals and academic needs, and the conflict was felt first and most sharply at Missouri.’
By Philip Meyer

Afghanistan-ism: An Apt Metaphor for Foreign News Reporting
When independent judgment isn’t valued in the work journalists do overseas, the consequences for the nation can be devastating.
By John Maxwell Hamilton

Blogging: Taking a Look After a Decade of Growth
By Jonathan Seitz