quest for adventure.  (less)

ascendency of television news. Donovan and Scherer have used several unpublished journalists' accounts in this book, which differs from other studies in that it synthesizes scholarly sources along with first-hand experiences. Robert J. Donovan was chief of the Washington bureau of the New York Herald Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. He is currently a writer in Washington, D.C. Ray Scherer was a member of the NBC News Washington staff when its television broadcasts began in 1947. He was NBC's White House correspondent during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations and, later, NBC London correspondent.  (less)

Common American of all regions and religions. Terkel has used his hometown of Chicago as something of a case study for divining the state of the Union; his many years as a disc jockey and radio-show host there have imbued him with a street-smart repartee that he has smoothly translated to the written word. For Terkel, words and music have an innate and distinctly American bond, and elements of jazz, in particular, have found their way into his ongoing dialogue with America. In this comprehensive look at the Terkel omnibus of writings, James T. Baker underscores his subject's unique place among social commentators: though his books are always literate and poignant, Terkel stays a healthy arm's length away from the description man of letters . His most recent book identifies race as the foremost American obsession, but Terkel has, according to Baker, made his way through life exploring an array of American obsessions - from religion to baseball to jazz to the Progressive and Populist party politics of earlier eras and the ailing state of the Democrats and Republicans in our own time. Baker finds that, in his oral histories (Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970), Working: People Talk about What They Do All Day and How The Feel about What They Do (1974), The Good War : An Oral History of World War II (1984), and Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession (1992)), Terkel elicits a candor frominterviewees that ultimately questions the complacent, status quo rendering of U.S. history. This slice-of-life reportage, says Baker, springs from Terkel's early days in television, primarily with his show Studs' Place , which made its debut on NBC television in 1950 and was described by its host as so true to life that Brecht would have roared at it. Probably Chicago's most eminent octogenarian, Terkel has led a life of interesting contradictions, Baker points out: he is somewhat of an expert on American ethnic minorities, many of them far removed from his own urbanity. A white Jewish man, he is often at home in a black Baptist church listening to the gospel music of Mahalia Jackson. Reared in a thoroughly capitalist home by a mother who dreamed of riches, he is a socialist. Fervently devoted to Chicago, The City That Works , he rejects its political values and considers the agrarian Progressive Robert La Follette his hero. Baker's engaging and biographically copious appraisal of Terkel's portraiture of America and its people - from Division Street: America (1967) to American Dreams, Lost and Found (1980) to The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream (1988) - should be of great value to anyone interested in the social and popular-culture histories no  (less)

the best designed and most educational toys, books, recordings, videos and software for kids from infancy to age 10. More than 1,000 products reviewed as well as chapter for kids with special needs. Oppenheims are contributors to NBC's TODAY Show.  (less)

Kurdish war, but she has never told these stories in a book-until now.brbrCockburn was one of the first women to break into the tight fraternity of combat and third-world reportage when she began work at the London bureau of NBC News in 1976-where successful news gathering required "unorthodox tactics, stamina, and, for best results, a criminal mind." By the time she moved to CBS's "60 Minutes," Cockburn had interviewed Muammar Qaddaffi and Margaret Thatcher, been arrested as spy in Gambia, and effectively eliminated whatever doubts her colleagues might have had about a woman's ability to tackle the news business's most dangerous assignments.brbrA mother of three who has made a career of breaking down barriers, Leslie Cockburn has exposed the tobacco lobby in Washington and human rights violations in Cambodia, and her impact on foreign and domestic policy has been as powerful as her impact on the rights and prerogatives of working women. In an industry in which, as late as 1973, women had to lobby to wear trousers to work, Leslie Cockburn was determined to combine a strong family life with a strong professional life, sacrificing neither.brbrWith a cast of generals, drug lords, rock stars, and kings, LOOKING FOR TROUBLE is the incredible story of a career that has spanned the history-making news events of the last two decades.  (less)