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Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson Review

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Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson ReviewSure we've heard about his famous friends, his Rolling Stone cred, all the legendary drug abuse, so much so that it's made him a pop culture caricature. William McKeen is perhaps the first to step behind the curtain, cozy up to the good doctor's real posse and find out just what made the man behind the gonzo tick. This is a history book written for pleasure readers, filled with storytelling, charm, wit and yes, pain. McKeen manages to step back from the HST fame cycle and look again at the writer, the journalist and the very flawed spirit and tell his story with a discerning eye. While other fame-seekers and hangers-on have delved into the mystique with their own bio books, this one brings you the most respectable and honest cast of Thompson and his crazy life. A history and bio that's hard to put down.Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson Overview

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Full Swing: Hits, Runs and Errors in a Writer's Life Review

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Full Swing: Hits, Runs and Errors in a Writer's Life ReviewWhen you finish reading "Full Swing," including the funny and touching final two chapters of this conversational memoir, you will feel that you know Ira Berkow well. The author, a prolific writer (17 books and many articles) and a sports columnist for the New York Times for over 25 years, has produced an honest, seamless, conversational memoir which pulls the reader into the heart of a richly led life. Anecdotes abound, many about the sports, entertainment and political figures he has known and interviewed. Berkow pulls no punches in describing his own stuttering development as a writer, growing up on the West Side of Chicago, his early career as a reporter in Minneapolis, and his later move to New York City, where he worked first for a newspaper syndicate and later as the by-liner of the "Sports of the Times" column.
The book is a walk through Berkow's life, often retracing his steps, making frequent, leisurely stops to explore people, places, ideas, successes, regrets, loves both lost and found, yet managing in the course of his peregrination to tie it all together such that the reader comes to understand the inner self of this talented, introspective, honest and thoroughly unpretentious writer, and ultimately wishes he could spend more time with him.
The major press book reviews have cited anecdotes and quotes from various sources, including Red Smith, the sports writer whom Berkow succeeded at the Times, Richard Nixon, Groucho Marx, and numerous others such as Willie Mays, Eddie Waitkus, Hank Sauer, Al Kaline, Pete Rose, Phil Jackson and Mohammed Ali. But it is really the stories about the non-sports personalities from his past, including those in his own family, that best describe and define Berkow as a person. One such story about his cousin, a lawyer whose career ranged from a public defender to a federal judge, and who dealt with "the most monumental and noble of causes," is central to Berkow's exploration of the significance of one's own contributions, whether they are made in the public or private sphere.
"Full Swing" will appeal especially to those readers who, despite a slightly guilty conscience, always turn first to the sports pages.Full Swing: Hits, Runs and Errors in a Writer's Life Overview

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Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan Review

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Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan ReviewOr, in Jake Adelstein's case, it doesn't -- thankfully, because American readers now finally have access to a book that chronicles the real Japan, free of stereotypes and even more well-rounded and nuanced as any of the 'foreigner abroad' books we are accustomed to reading from Americans who head off to the more culturally-familiar terrain of Europe.
Full disclosure: I lived in Tokyo for parts of early 80s before finally leaving in 1985, before Adelstein arrived to study at Sophia University. Like him, I began my journalistic career there, although it was as a copy editor at the English-language Japan Times rather than as a reporter for a Japanese daily. Even in 1985, being a 'gaijin' (foreigner) and a female would have put paid to any such plans, even if my decidedly unfluent Japanese hadn't. Adelstein, however, benefited from the passage of time, his language skills and his gender and landed a job at the Yomiuri newspaper, one of the country's largest. Automatically an unusual person in Japan's extraordinarily homogenous society (at the time I lived there, at least, there was no space on a driver's license for hair or eye color -- because it was assumed that all would be the same...), Adelstein ended up covering another kind group of misfits in Japan: the country's yakuza, or organized criminals.
It's a fascinating world, part of Japanese popular culture as much as the Mafia is here, and yet virtually unrecognized outside of the country. Along with writing about the yakuza, Adelstein does a fabulous job of raising the curtain on the lives of ordinary Japanese, finally debunking all the stereotypes. Japanese men gawk at the pictures in Madonna's "Sex"; the male reporters openly read porn magazines in the workspace. Social life revolves around getting drunk; the job of a police reporter like Adelstein includes paying evening calls to the homes of his detective friends. Adelstein shows how phenomena like the hostess clubs are fueled by "alienation, boredom and loneliness."
That said, this is a very uneven book. The first half, in particular, seems to be the story of a foreigner who gets himself a job at a Japanese newspaper, thinks to himself, "wow, this is cool and different and maybe I'll write a book about it, too, because not many people have done what I've done." The glimpse behind the scenes of a Japanese newspaper were interesting enough, but after a while the long paragraphs, one after another, of people talking became wearying. So did Adelstein's self-congratulatory air: Getting words of praise from a colleague is "a good feeling"; another story is "a nice little scoop", or "our investigative reporting had the gratifying result of spurring the Saitama police into arresting the people responsible for the bank failure." Yawn. And I could have done without the insights into his sex life, as when he leaves his 'girlfriend' hanging on in the love hotel room they have rented by the hour in order to deal with an editor. "Honorable me, I knew I owed her. So I turned my beeper off for the first time in months." At times, he sounds almost smug.
And yet, just as I was about to give up on the book, it took off and turned into an extraordinary chronicle, revealing in the process an entirely different narrator, someone passionate and thoughtful enough about the world he sees around him to be willing to stand up and be counted. He becomes the nail that sticks up and must be hammered down, in the Japanese saying used of people who place their independent thoughts above smooth social relationships. And the people who wanted to do the hammering were Japan's yakuza, as Adelstein's beat takes him into an investigation of sexual slavery and abuse in Japan's hostess bars, 'soaplands' and brothels. What had been almost flippant before (see Jake Adelstein as a male host!) becomes deadly serious, and I ended up reading late into the night to discover what happened, just as I would have done with a great thriller. The catch, of course, is that the crimes and abuses committed by the yakuza, for which the police are unable or unwilling to prosecute them, were and remain real. Adelstein points out the difficulty of prosecuting human trafficking offenses in a country where the victims are promptly deported -- and then the police and law enforcement officials point out that they have no complaining witnesses! He points to the impact of the casual racism and sexism on law enforcement, from attitudes to Koreans of Japanese descent to the women who arrive in Japan to work as hostesses. And ultimately, he puts his life on the line -- literally -- in an effort to expose some of these abuses.
The heroes of Adelstein's book come from across the board -- this is not smart gaijin hero versus thick-witted racist Japanese, or evil Yakuza versus courageous journalists. Some of the most poignant and heartfelt parts of this ultimately very moving book are those devoted to one of his closest friends, a Japanese police detective, and to an Australian bar girl who becomes a friend of sorts. And ultimately Adelstein sheds that self-satisfied foreigner abroad persona, recognizing that his all-too-human failures as a person and a reporter meant that "I'd endangered every person I cared about, liked, loved, or simply knew. (They had become) potential leverage for (the yakuza target of his investigations) who had no qualms about using people like cannon fodder." It's a cry from the heart, and the story of Adelstein's investigations and efforts to get his worked published make this book a 'must read'.
I'd like to think that the Japanese fascination with what other nations think about them would mean that this book will be translated into Japanese and have a wide audience there. Given the difficulty Adelstein had in finding a Japanese publisher for his journalistic scoops about the yakuza's worst crimes, I'm not sure it will happen. Moreover, the home truths that Adelstein tells -- from a position inside Japanese society, not from the usual gaijin perspective of having one foot in Tokyo's expat community -- about everything from the ugly realities underlying the hostess bar culture and the treatment of a female fellow reporter and friend at the Yomiuri, to the horrors of human trafficking, may prove hard for them to digest. In any event, it's a fascinating read that I'd recommend to anyone with an interest in Japan or thinking of going to live or work there.
A few other recommendations: For more insight into the dysfunctional part of Japanese society (if not the criminal element), try Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation (Vintage Departures) or Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan. Some dark comedy and brilliant film-making comes from Juzo Itami, who, it appears, may have been murdered by yakuza rather than committing suicide. Many probably are familiar with Tampopo; just as good, IMO, is A Taxing Woman; the sequel, A Taxing Woman's Return, is still available only on VHS. Both are great and hilarious examples of a crusading tax inspector battling her own bureaucracy and the criminal elements who happen to be evading their taxes. I can't recommend either film strongly enough.
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan Overview

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Late Edition: A Love Story Review

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Late Edition: A Love Story ReviewLate Edition is a nostalgic, fascinating, inside, and definitely sweet peek of a young reporter's foray into the newspaper industry. It left me with a clear understand of the magic it was to work for a newspaper but it also left me deeply pondering. If the death toll continues to rise among newspapers, what does this mean for our communities that relied on newspapers for not only current events, local coverage but also for bonding us together? Can YOU imagine your local newspaper fading away? I can't.Late Edition: A Love Story Overview

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Exploding Whale: And Other Remarkable Stories from Review

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Exploding Whale: And Other Remarkable Stories from ReviewPaul is a naturally funny guy, and now we know he can lay it out on paper, as well.
In this book he weaves memories from his career around, between, and through a serial narrative of his most famous story---the exploding whale of Florence, Oregon. Never heard of it? This event, along with the dynamite, the stench, the rain of blubber, and the resulting 'cover-up', established a comic standard for bureaucratic ineptitude. In his book, Paul answers all the questions and puts to rest the rumors, finally.
More important, this is an honest, insightful look inside television news as used to be, and as many us wish it had remained.
Paul shares as many laughs as nuggets of wisdom.Exploding Whale: And Other Remarkable Stories from OverviewThis lively and entertaining autobiography about the career of a television news reporter begins and ends with the one story he covered early in this career that just won't go away.

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Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else Review

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Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else Review"Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else," by Reporters of the Associated Press, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2007. This is a very nicely done coffee table book telling mostly how news has been reported by the Associated Press over its history since about 1850. The book includes many first rate, quality photographs, often famous ones related to major stories. It also includes photo reproductions of telegrams and teletypes reporting famous news stories such as Lincoln's assassination, and even 9/11.
A section includes a glossary of wire service terms. We learn that AP's main national newswire is known as the A-wire, which is controlled from New York City. There is also an F-wire, which carries financial news, presumably in competition with the Dow Jones Broad Ticker and the Bloomberg News Service. There is also a Sports Wire, which carries sports news, and one suspects there are numerous regional wires, and probably international wires covering the news at various levels. We learn that for many years Reuters stories have been distributed in the US by the AP and Associated Press stories have been distributed in Europe by Reuters. The famous lead or "lede" is the first paragraph of the story intended to grab the reader's attention. A newsflash is a news alert of immediate importance. Though rarely sent by AP two were sent within two hours on 9/11. Five bells is the signal from the teletype alerting of incoming news usually a flash or bulletin. A bulletin is a major breaking news story; an urgent heading indicates an important story not quite of bulletin caliber.
Section titles gives some idea of the content. They are War I, Trials, Freedom of Information, Aviation, Sports, Elections, Civil Rights, War I I, Foreign Correspondents, Photographs, Disasters, and the White House.
The news business includes its share of blunders. Several famous ones are described. Shortly after the Union victory at Gettysburg, a spoof message was sent to New York papers announcing that Grant was giving up his Wilderness Campaign and Lincoln had declared "a national day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer." Most papers immediately recognized the story as false, but two published it.
At the end of World War I, United Press, a competitor, announced that the armistice had been signed on November 7 - 4 days before the event actually occurred. At the Lindbergh kidnapping trial in Flemington NJ, on September 20, 1934, AP had developed an elaborate code to signal the terms of the jury verdict before competitors could leave the courtroom. Confusion resulted in a misunderstood code and a false flash, announcing a verdict had been reached "guilty and life" rather than "guilty with the death sentence." As a result, AP fired one man, suspended another, and demoted a third.
To get ready for deadline, news stories are often written ahead with the name of the winner inserted at the last minute. In AP lingo, "Will Overhead" was a fill name for the winner to be sent by "overhead wire" later. At least once, a newspaper staffed by inexperienced personnel managed to publish Will Overhead in a headline as the winner of an event.
The addition of photographs to the AP wire service was an important development. In 1926 American Telephone & Telegraph Co. began commercial picture transmissions between major US cities. The pictures were of rather low quality, but Associated Press began using that service in 1928. However, AT&T discontinued their service in 1933 finding that the business was not profitable. AP began its Wirephoto service on January 1, 1935, with 47 newspapers in 25 states.
In March, 1959, China took over Tibet and forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India. AP and UPI were in competition to get a photo of the Dalai Lama sent by radio photo to newspapers around the globe. UPI won by almost 57 minutes, but they misidentified the man in the photo. Their photo was cropped and identified the Indian Foreign Ministry's press spokesman as the Dalai Lama. The AP photo came later, but with correct identification. The AP creed is timely, accurate, and unbiased.
The appendix includes a brief history of the Associated Press. According to the summary, news has always been highly competitive with papers using various means to get the story first. Originally it was a matter of racing horses, using carrier pigeons or whatever to get the story there a day sooner. Major stories often took a week to get to eastern newspapers. The telegraph changed all that. Now stories could be delivered to the paper within hours. The Associated Press grew out of coverage by competing New York City newspapers of the Mexican War in April, 1846. They realized they were duplicating efforts, and instead decided to cooperate and share the news stories from afar. Initially the news went only to the New York City newspapers. Only later did they agree to supply the news to outlet's across the country in return for fees.
For years, the Associated Press was "the" news service. By arrangement with Western Union, the telegraph company agreed to carry AP news reports exclusively so long as the news service spoke kindly of Western Union. In addition, any subscriber to the AP service could block any competing newspaper's participation in the service. Since there were few other telegraph companies that effectively meant no alternative. That is quite unlike today's networks when NBC and CBS, and later ABC, Fox, and CNN, provide competing services. In the heyday of AP and Western Union the combination told the Republican view and were said not to transmit the position of the other side.
A problem with the history summary is that the story of the beginning of the wire services told by AP differs somewhat from that told by Alexander Jones in his "Historical Sketch of the Electric Telegraph." According to Jones, telegraph companies formed news departments to report commodity pricing of materials like flour and grain in cities along the telegraph lines. How these services were ultimately combined with those of AP is not clear. However, AP admits that its early records are fragmentary.
The appendix includes a list of AP General Agents, General Managers, and CEOs dating back to 1849 as well as the locations of the Associated Press offices in New York City back to 1849. The volume includes extensive endnotes and is well indexed.
Overall, this book is very well done. Readers will appreciate its highly professional presentation. They will be reminded of moments in history, and they will find it informative and entertaining.Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else Overview

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Learning to Swim: A Novel Review

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Learning to Swim: A Novel ReviewLEARNING TO SWIM may be the best debut novel I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them. It's written in effortless first person, and only moments into the first chapter I found myself thinking of myself AS the book's main character, even though her life and adventures are very different than mine.
Tucked within this thriller are meditations on the nature of family, how bonding happens, the dangers of allowing ourselves to be vulnerable - things you will take with you, when you climb out of the swift-moving river that is LEARNING TO SWIM.
Bring a towel.Learning to Swim: A Novel Overview

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