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David Brinkley
David Brinkley, icon of the American airwaves, has written his autobiography, a classic American story which overlaps with some of the great events and important personages of the era. From playing poker with Truman to riding the rails with Churchill to walking the beaches with D-Day veterans, readers are privy to some of Brinkley's most priceless remembrances. of photos.
273 pages, Hardcover
First published October 10, 1995
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141 people want to read
About the author
David Brinkley
27 books11 followersFull name: David McClure Brinkley
*ABC and NBC newscaster
*Co-anchored the Huntley–Brinkley Report
*NBC Nightly News co-anchor and correspondent
*Sunday This Week with David Brinkley
Received:
*ten Emmy Awards
*three George Foster Peabody Awards
*Presidential Medal of Freedom
*ABC and NBC newscaster
*Co-anchored the Huntley–Brinkley Report
*NBC Nightly News co-anchor and correspondent
*Sunday This Week with David Brinkley
Received:
*ten Emmy Awards
*three George Foster Peabody Awards
*Presidential Medal of Freedom
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 3, 2017
Really interesting tidbits about some of the major events and major players of the mid-to-late 20th century, as well as a nice behind the scenes peek at the early television industry. I was too young to pay close attention to Brinkley when he was on in prime time, but from what he writes, it sounds like TV journalism today could learn from his direct statements, his parsimonious use of words, and his sense of humor.
As to his stories, for some reason I'm still always shocked and somewhat appalled when I hear about journalists rubbing elbows with those they're covering. Brinkley talks about hosting the Kennedy family at his home just days after JFK's assassination, playing poker with Truman, Johnson flying him up to Camp David just to hang out, etc. How can a journalist report fairly on those with whom he socializes? That access provides Brinkley with the fodder for an interesting book several decades later, though.
Probably the least titillating chapter, but the most important to read, is the one on taxes.* Brinkley gives a brief but critical overview on the history of income tax, withholding, etc. which illustrates the greed and corruption in Congress and the gouging of the American public. If everyone had this basic understanding of things, the public might actually get angry enough to demand tax reform. But Congress knows it's not a sexy issue, and that most Americans are sheep who will do as they're told and will support the erroneous notion that higher taxes on "the wealthy" is somehow sticking it to others, when it's also the middle class that's getting skewered.
*My copy was an uncorrected proof. I have not seen the final, published version, but hope this chapter on taxation made the cut!
As to his stories, for some reason I'm still always shocked and somewhat appalled when I hear about journalists rubbing elbows with those they're covering. Brinkley talks about hosting the Kennedy family at his home just days after JFK's assassination, playing poker with Truman, Johnson flying him up to Camp David just to hang out, etc. How can a journalist report fairly on those with whom he socializes? That access provides Brinkley with the fodder for an interesting book several decades later, though.
Probably the least titillating chapter, but the most important to read, is the one on taxes.* Brinkley gives a brief but critical overview on the history of income tax, withholding, etc. which illustrates the greed and corruption in Congress and the gouging of the American public. If everyone had this basic understanding of things, the public might actually get angry enough to demand tax reform. But Congress knows it's not a sexy issue, and that most Americans are sheep who will do as they're told and will support the erroneous notion that higher taxes on "the wealthy" is somehow sticking it to others, when it's also the middle class that's getting skewered.
*My copy was an uncorrected proof. I have not seen the final, published version, but hope this chapter on taxation made the cut!
February 24, 2019
I got what I expected from this autobiography/memoir of David Brinkley, a television journalist who many remember on Sunday mornings with ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley" -- renamed now with current ABC host George Stephanopoulos. But I also remember Brinkley's teaming with Chet Huntley on NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report, the Peacock Network's award-winning nightly newscast that rivaled CBS's Walter Cronkite for the evening news audience.
It is a biography -- a look back into how Brinkley moved from Wilmington, North Carolina to the military and eventually to his journalism career based for the most part in Washington, DC. But the book is also a collection of Brinkley's opinions and personal stories that show he became one of the country's leading authorities on politics. He tells stories of the Kennedy's and his unusual relationship with Lyndon Johnson. There are tales of the early days of television and the way television has grown in coverage of major events -- including president campaigns and conventions.
It's a good book about how television evolved and how he played a major role in its evolution.
It is a biography -- a look back into how Brinkley moved from Wilmington, North Carolina to the military and eventually to his journalism career based for the most part in Washington, DC. But the book is also a collection of Brinkley's opinions and personal stories that show he became one of the country's leading authorities on politics. He tells stories of the Kennedy's and his unusual relationship with Lyndon Johnson. There are tales of the early days of television and the way television has grown in coverage of major events -- including president campaigns and conventions.
It's a good book about how television evolved and how he played a major role in its evolution.
August 31, 2024
It was an ok biography of Brinkley. Glossed over a lot of parts and didn't have a huge amount of detail. an OK read.
March 12, 2021
David Brinkley was such a talented storyteller. I would love to hear his voice again, giving his commentary on everything that has transpired in the 21st century.
October 26, 2012
I really enjoyed the stories that Brinkley told in this book. The problem was that it sounded exactly if he had spoken them into a dictaphone. Writing that imitates speech can work in some cases. Here, it detracted from what otherwise could have been a great book. For every amusing story about a politician, there was a grammatical error. Many sentences lacked verbs. Couldn't the folks at Knopf done a better job editing this?
March 27, 2018
Brinkley's memoir is okay. The best parts are his anecdotes about the history of television and the transition from news radio to news via television. For many of the major stories he covered in his career (the JFK assassination, Apollo 11, Watergate, etc.), he doesn't go into as much detail as I would have expected. He also jumped around in time a bit, straining the narrative slightly. It's not great, but it's pretty good!
April 22, 2012
For someone as old as David Brinkley lived to be, his Memoir was history almost before he finished writing it. He covers his childhood in the American South and his early career which coincided with early radio and television.
A valuable book which covers a time and an author that has sadly passed.
A valuable book which covers a time and an author that has sadly passed.
January 6, 2008
I found this a surprisingly readable book. Brinkley has a wry sense of humor that carries over into his writing.
January 7, 2010
I did not know David Brinkley was from Wilmington, NC. It was interesting to read about the birth and evolution of TV news.
December 13, 2010
I heard this book on tape, read by the author. Mr. Brinkley has a very pleasant way of speaking. It's an interesting story, historically. Journalism moving from print to radio to television.
December 28, 2010
I loved watching This Week with David Brinkley, yet found myself slightly disappointed with this book. A good man, yet not the one I had made him to be in my mind.
Read
December 2, 2012good
May 15, 2015
"Um homem de sucesso é aquele que cria uma parede com os tijolos que lhe atiraram".
(David Brinkley)
February 23, 2016
This review was first published in my blog: http://sagecoveredhills.blogspot.com/...
A friend lent me this book over a year ago and since David Brinkley is a Southerner (like me), I decided I needed to read it and return it before dry rot sets in. Not only are we both Southerners, Brinkley and I in the same town, just forty years apart. I became aware of the large world around me through reading the Star News and watching Brinkley and Huntley on our local NBC affiliate. Reading Brinkley’s memoirs, I found many places where our lives intersected and highlighted a few in this review.
Brinkley started his news career with the Star News while a student at New Hanover High School. (His school was known to those of us at the other school as “New Hang-over). At the time, the Wilmington Star news was much smaller than when I was living there in the late 60s and 70s. Yet Brinkley got to work with a handful of great newsmen including Sam Ragan. Ragan later owned and edited The Pilot, a weekly paper in Moore County, and was also the Poet Laureate of North Carolina. I have several of his books of poetry on my shelves including a signed copy of Journey into Morning that I cherish. As a high school intern, Brinkley was assigned a story about a woman who claimed to have a Mexican agave plant that bloomed every century and was getting ready to bloom. The scene around the woman’s house became a circus as people poured in to see such a sign and the Fire Department strung up lights for people to see it at night. In preparation for the story, Brinkley did a little research. Looking the plant up in the dictionary, he learned it was erroneously believed to bloom every 100 years. He called Will Rehder, Wilmington’s long time florist (although Will may have been gone by the time I came along, it was from his shop that I ordered an orchid corsage for my Senior Prom date). Rehder told Brinkley he didn’t know a “damn thing†about the plant. Thinking his first story was going to be a washout, Brinkley went anyway and reported on the circus, filling the story with folksy quotes of the bystanders, one of whom was complaining about how much tax money was being wasted on the event. The cactus didn’t bloom, but his article was reprinted in the Los Angeles Times and Brinkley had himself a career.
Interestingly, at the end of this book, Brinkley returns to the topic of wasteful government spending. Not only did he complain about taxes, but concludes his memoirs by advocating a flat tax. I found this interesting and a bit out of place in a memoir. Perhaps my shock shows I had brought into the rhetoric about him being a liberal broadcaster. In truth, throughout the book he presents himself as a fiscal conservative.
Brinkley grew up spending his summers on Wrightsville Beach and enjoying his time at the Lumina, a landmark that was torn down when I was in Junior High. I remember being there as a kid. You could shower off the salt underneath the pavilion and there were pool tables where, for a quarter, you could shoot a game. In my first year of blogging, I wrote a poem about this lost landmark. Another local spot he recalls is Uncle Henry’s Oyster Roast. It was located on Masonboro Sound and I rode by the turn-off twice a day when I was in elementary school. I’m not sure when the business closed, but I’m pretty sure it’s no longer there.
As the Second World War approached and the country was instituting the draft, Brinkley decided to wait on college. He joined the army in 1940, with a bunch of “Dry Ponders†(Dry Pond was an area of Wilmington). He didn’t last long and received a medical discharge for a defective kidney. Sadly, most of those he joined up with were part of the 120 Infantry, 13th Division. On July 25, 1944, after having survived D-Day, the unit was wiped out by friendly fire, when a bomber group missed a target and unloaded their bombs on the unit. Of the 250 in the company, 245 died.
Discharged, Brinkley quickly rose to the top of the journalistic world. He worked for the United Press in several southern locations and by 1943, when many newsmen were overseas, found himself in Washington, a city from which he’d report on for the next four decades.
Much of the book is about Brinkley’s professional life, especially focusing on his meetings with Presidents and coverage of election campaigns. I never knew when I was watching Brinkley just how far he’d come in the business. He was at the 1952 political conventions, the first to be covered by national television. Back then, the three networks had to share one video feed to the West Coast! By ’68, the first conventions I remember, he was an old hand. He continued to be a stable at conventions even after he’d retired.
Brinkley expressed his dislike of Senator Joseph McCarthy, but during the McCarthy era, he was in a unique position. His sister Mary was a legal secretary working for the McCarthy. At the time, she defended her boss and the two of them had to avoid the subject at family gatherings, but she later admitted that most of McCarthy’s allegations were lies. Another part of the book I found interesting was his insights into the 1964 Republican convention. Brinkley reported on efforts by Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, Nelson Rockefeller of New York, and George Romney of Michigan to have the convention to adopt an anti-extremist platform (condemning the Communist Party as well as the Klan and the John Birch Society). All such attempts failed by large margins, as did an attempt to show support for the Civil Right’s movement. The rhetoric against journalists were so harsh that when former President Eisenhower spoke and mentioned “sensation-seeking columnists and commentators,†the crowd went wild and stormed toward the reporting booths with angry fists raised. Brinkley said that for the first time he was glad there was glass between him and the crowd. While this went on, Eisenhower stood at the podium, bewildered at the reaction of the crowd. Even though the delegates disliked him as a part of the liberal media, Brinkley spoke fondly of Goldwater, whom the party nominated for President that year.
Brinkley gives insight into many of the Presidents. He tells about Kennedy sending out aides to buy up all the Cuban cigars in the capital the night before he imposed an embargo. He also told about being eating out with his wife one evening and being joined by many of the Kennedy family (President Kennedy wasn’t one of them, but Teddy was there). When the meal was over, he was shocked to find he’d been given the bill for everyone there. Brinkley tells about Lyndon Johnson sending a helicopter out to find where he and his wife were one weekend, to invite them to come to dinner at the White House. Brinkley considered Nixon one of the most intelligent Presidents in recent history, but he also found it odd that he man was never happy, never smiled or cracked a joke.
As a Southerner, Brinkley took a lot of heat for doing an early interview with Martin Luther King and for NBC’s coverage of the racial problems in the South. He tells about how one station, WRAL in Raleigh, NC, hired Jesse Helms to go on right after the evening news in order to counter the “lies†told by Brinkley and Huntley. He was even called “Broker T. Brinkley.†Interestingly, WRAL signal didn’t make it to the Brinkley’s hometown of Wilmington. Growing up, I was spared Helm’s diatribes except when I was staying with grandparents.
In addition to covering politics, the memoir also covers the internal politics at NBC. He tells about a strike of the AFTRA, the union for members of news media. They’d called for a strike and Brinkley’s attorney suggested he not work. He didn’t, but Huntley (who was more of a free-spirited westerner) decided he would cross the picket lines and work. All their show got was mail—from both sides. Many felt that Brinkley was selfish for striking when he was making so much money (in truth, the strike didn’t have any effect on his contract). Union members also felt that Huntley was abandoning them by working during the strike. Not long afterwards, Huntley retired and moved to a ranch in his native Montana. Brinkley later went to ABC, where he ran a weekly news show with George Will, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson.
Brinkley adds many stories in the book that don’t seem to fit, but are funny. One came from Gulf Oil, the sponsor of the news program for years. He told about how Gulf Oil, in the early 60s, sent out undercover inspectors to check on their gas stations. In one station, somewhere in mid-America, the inspector was horrified to find a condom machine in a women’s bathroom. Putting in change, the inspector found it empty. It was bad enough to have the condom machine in the first place. The station owner was confronted and he defended himself saying that he made a $100 a month on that machine and it never had any condoms in it. Such was the era, Brinkley said, that no woman would have admitted to a male gas station attendant that she’d lost her quarters in a condom machine.
I enjoyed the book, perhaps more so because I cherished the first chapter and its insight into Wilmington in the 30s. However, I did find it a bit confusing. Brinkley jumps around a lot. It’s almost like you’re talking to him and he remembers something that he forgot to say and jumps back (or ahead) in time. I found it refreshing how “blessed†he felt his life had been. This quote sums it up:
With all of this, I am blessed beyond anything that in my days in Wilmington, North Carolina, I could every have expected or even imagined. Credit it all to luck, modest talent and chancing to be in the right place at the right time to start modestly in a new and promising industry, television, and to grow with it as it grew to its overwhelming presence today. (255)
A friend lent me this book over a year ago and since David Brinkley is a Southerner (like me), I decided I needed to read it and return it before dry rot sets in. Not only are we both Southerners, Brinkley and I in the same town, just forty years apart. I became aware of the large world around me through reading the Star News and watching Brinkley and Huntley on our local NBC affiliate. Reading Brinkley’s memoirs, I found many places where our lives intersected and highlighted a few in this review.
Brinkley started his news career with the Star News while a student at New Hanover High School. (His school was known to those of us at the other school as “New Hang-over). At the time, the Wilmington Star news was much smaller than when I was living there in the late 60s and 70s. Yet Brinkley got to work with a handful of great newsmen including Sam Ragan. Ragan later owned and edited The Pilot, a weekly paper in Moore County, and was also the Poet Laureate of North Carolina. I have several of his books of poetry on my shelves including a signed copy of Journey into Morning that I cherish. As a high school intern, Brinkley was assigned a story about a woman who claimed to have a Mexican agave plant that bloomed every century and was getting ready to bloom. The scene around the woman’s house became a circus as people poured in to see such a sign and the Fire Department strung up lights for people to see it at night. In preparation for the story, Brinkley did a little research. Looking the plant up in the dictionary, he learned it was erroneously believed to bloom every 100 years. He called Will Rehder, Wilmington’s long time florist (although Will may have been gone by the time I came along, it was from his shop that I ordered an orchid corsage for my Senior Prom date). Rehder told Brinkley he didn’t know a “damn thing†about the plant. Thinking his first story was going to be a washout, Brinkley went anyway and reported on the circus, filling the story with folksy quotes of the bystanders, one of whom was complaining about how much tax money was being wasted on the event. The cactus didn’t bloom, but his article was reprinted in the Los Angeles Times and Brinkley had himself a career.
Interestingly, at the end of this book, Brinkley returns to the topic of wasteful government spending. Not only did he complain about taxes, but concludes his memoirs by advocating a flat tax. I found this interesting and a bit out of place in a memoir. Perhaps my shock shows I had brought into the rhetoric about him being a liberal broadcaster. In truth, throughout the book he presents himself as a fiscal conservative.
Brinkley grew up spending his summers on Wrightsville Beach and enjoying his time at the Lumina, a landmark that was torn down when I was in Junior High. I remember being there as a kid. You could shower off the salt underneath the pavilion and there were pool tables where, for a quarter, you could shoot a game. In my first year of blogging, I wrote a poem about this lost landmark. Another local spot he recalls is Uncle Henry’s Oyster Roast. It was located on Masonboro Sound and I rode by the turn-off twice a day when I was in elementary school. I’m not sure when the business closed, but I’m pretty sure it’s no longer there.
As the Second World War approached and the country was instituting the draft, Brinkley decided to wait on college. He joined the army in 1940, with a bunch of “Dry Ponders†(Dry Pond was an area of Wilmington). He didn’t last long and received a medical discharge for a defective kidney. Sadly, most of those he joined up with were part of the 120 Infantry, 13th Division. On July 25, 1944, after having survived D-Day, the unit was wiped out by friendly fire, when a bomber group missed a target and unloaded their bombs on the unit. Of the 250 in the company, 245 died.
Discharged, Brinkley quickly rose to the top of the journalistic world. He worked for the United Press in several southern locations and by 1943, when many newsmen were overseas, found himself in Washington, a city from which he’d report on for the next four decades.
Much of the book is about Brinkley’s professional life, especially focusing on his meetings with Presidents and coverage of election campaigns. I never knew when I was watching Brinkley just how far he’d come in the business. He was at the 1952 political conventions, the first to be covered by national television. Back then, the three networks had to share one video feed to the West Coast! By ’68, the first conventions I remember, he was an old hand. He continued to be a stable at conventions even after he’d retired.
Brinkley expressed his dislike of Senator Joseph McCarthy, but during the McCarthy era, he was in a unique position. His sister Mary was a legal secretary working for the McCarthy. At the time, she defended her boss and the two of them had to avoid the subject at family gatherings, but she later admitted that most of McCarthy’s allegations were lies. Another part of the book I found interesting was his insights into the 1964 Republican convention. Brinkley reported on efforts by Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, Nelson Rockefeller of New York, and George Romney of Michigan to have the convention to adopt an anti-extremist platform (condemning the Communist Party as well as the Klan and the John Birch Society). All such attempts failed by large margins, as did an attempt to show support for the Civil Right’s movement. The rhetoric against journalists were so harsh that when former President Eisenhower spoke and mentioned “sensation-seeking columnists and commentators,†the crowd went wild and stormed toward the reporting booths with angry fists raised. Brinkley said that for the first time he was glad there was glass between him and the crowd. While this went on, Eisenhower stood at the podium, bewildered at the reaction of the crowd. Even though the delegates disliked him as a part of the liberal media, Brinkley spoke fondly of Goldwater, whom the party nominated for President that year.
Brinkley gives insight into many of the Presidents. He tells about Kennedy sending out aides to buy up all the Cuban cigars in the capital the night before he imposed an embargo. He also told about being eating out with his wife one evening and being joined by many of the Kennedy family (President Kennedy wasn’t one of them, but Teddy was there). When the meal was over, he was shocked to find he’d been given the bill for everyone there. Brinkley tells about Lyndon Johnson sending a helicopter out to find where he and his wife were one weekend, to invite them to come to dinner at the White House. Brinkley considered Nixon one of the most intelligent Presidents in recent history, but he also found it odd that he man was never happy, never smiled or cracked a joke.
As a Southerner, Brinkley took a lot of heat for doing an early interview with Martin Luther King and for NBC’s coverage of the racial problems in the South. He tells about how one station, WRAL in Raleigh, NC, hired Jesse Helms to go on right after the evening news in order to counter the “lies†told by Brinkley and Huntley. He was even called “Broker T. Brinkley.†Interestingly, WRAL signal didn’t make it to the Brinkley’s hometown of Wilmington. Growing up, I was spared Helm’s diatribes except when I was staying with grandparents.
In addition to covering politics, the memoir also covers the internal politics at NBC. He tells about a strike of the AFTRA, the union for members of news media. They’d called for a strike and Brinkley’s attorney suggested he not work. He didn’t, but Huntley (who was more of a free-spirited westerner) decided he would cross the picket lines and work. All their show got was mail—from both sides. Many felt that Brinkley was selfish for striking when he was making so much money (in truth, the strike didn’t have any effect on his contract). Union members also felt that Huntley was abandoning them by working during the strike. Not long afterwards, Huntley retired and moved to a ranch in his native Montana. Brinkley later went to ABC, where he ran a weekly news show with George Will, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson.
Brinkley adds many stories in the book that don’t seem to fit, but are funny. One came from Gulf Oil, the sponsor of the news program for years. He told about how Gulf Oil, in the early 60s, sent out undercover inspectors to check on their gas stations. In one station, somewhere in mid-America, the inspector was horrified to find a condom machine in a women’s bathroom. Putting in change, the inspector found it empty. It was bad enough to have the condom machine in the first place. The station owner was confronted and he defended himself saying that he made a $100 a month on that machine and it never had any condoms in it. Such was the era, Brinkley said, that no woman would have admitted to a male gas station attendant that she’d lost her quarters in a condom machine.
I enjoyed the book, perhaps more so because I cherished the first chapter and its insight into Wilmington in the 30s. However, I did find it a bit confusing. Brinkley jumps around a lot. It’s almost like you’re talking to him and he remembers something that he forgot to say and jumps back (or ahead) in time. I found it refreshing how “blessed†he felt his life had been. This quote sums it up:
With all of this, I am blessed beyond anything that in my days in Wilmington, North Carolina, I could every have expected or even imagined. Credit it all to luck, modest talent and chancing to be in the right place at the right time to start modestly in a new and promising industry, television, and to grow with it as it grew to its overwhelming presence today. (255)
November 12, 2020
I don't remember David Brinkley being my first choice growing up 😉 I have nothing against him, I just wasn't excited to read a book written by him so don't judge me if he was your favorite newscaster while I was still watching Little House on the Prairie ❤
The thing that drew me to his book was first I found it for $. 50 at a consignment store, and secondly he had a front row seat to history through 11 presidents, 4 wars, and several major events. I thought it would be a great read. I wasn't impressed. His writing style wasn't captivating... at all. There wasn't much of a flow either. I also felt like he took way too much time on political conventions. It was neat to see the change from year to year, but it got old.
What I did like... the transition from radio to tv was very interesting! It was more involved than I realized and these original broadcasters certainly had a tough job. His comments about FD Roosevelt were interesting. I believe he was one of the worst Presidents and I think Brinkley would agree. I enjoyed the last bit about the income tax... which is totally unconstitutional, in my opinion.
I didn't think it ended well either. I felt Brinkley ended on a note of hopelessness... which isn't the way you like your stories to end.
There were several other tidbits that I enjoyed that I'm not recalling now. The major theme of his book and so many others I've read is that there is nothing new under the sun. We think we are in a world of chaos and corruption that has never been known before. Not true. The more history you know, the more you realize you can not legislate morality.
The thing that drew me to his book was first I found it for $. 50 at a consignment store, and secondly he had a front row seat to history through 11 presidents, 4 wars, and several major events. I thought it would be a great read. I wasn't impressed. His writing style wasn't captivating... at all. There wasn't much of a flow either. I also felt like he took way too much time on political conventions. It was neat to see the change from year to year, but it got old.
What I did like... the transition from radio to tv was very interesting! It was more involved than I realized and these original broadcasters certainly had a tough job. His comments about FD Roosevelt were interesting. I believe he was one of the worst Presidents and I think Brinkley would agree. I enjoyed the last bit about the income tax... which is totally unconstitutional, in my opinion.
I didn't think it ended well either. I felt Brinkley ended on a note of hopelessness... which isn't the way you like your stories to end.
There were several other tidbits that I enjoyed that I'm not recalling now. The major theme of his book and so many others I've read is that there is nothing new under the sun. We think we are in a world of chaos and corruption that has never been known before. Not true. The more history you know, the more you realize you can not legislate morality.
January 17, 2024
Grew up watching the Huntley-Brinkley Report, and enjoy history, so his observations and insight were interesting, as always. I expected a little more since he had such a front row seat to so many leaders—but what he did include was quite interesting. His personal insight into Sen. McCarthy through his sister was fascinating. The last chapter being a few editorials of his personal views was a bit of a twist, but since it is his memoir, I suppose he has that right. An easy and enjoyable read.
November 19, 2019
Brinkley was an highly respected journalist and that reputation was well earned. There are no flaws in his writing style, which is clear, concise and can be trusted to be accurate.
This is a Memoir, not a Biography, so the retellings of events are not in chronological order which can be a bit disconcerting at times.
Towards the end of the book he sometimes sounds like a crabby old guy, but the overall style and substance of the book outweighs that.
This is a Memoir, not a Biography, so the retellings of events are not in chronological order which can be a bit disconcerting at times.
Towards the end of the book he sometimes sounds like a crabby old guy, but the overall style and substance of the book outweighs that.
March 18, 2021
A nostalgic look back (especially for those of us who remember The Huntley/Brinkley Report on NBC) and insightful views on the politics of the mid-to-late 20th century from one of the voices reporting on it. I found it intriguing that Brinkley doesn't seem to have been as "liberal" as certain politicians would have remembered him. and it reads (at least in my mind) just as it would sound coming from him. Totally enjoyed it.
November 17, 2020
An easy and enjoyable read. We could use a David Brinkley now as facts are rendered useless and actual expertise is disdained. He was a pioneer and a master at his craft, and he didn’t feel the need to fill empty space with banal arguments.
June 30, 2019
Really wish there had been an editorial presence to tell David that maybe spending the last 20 pages of a memoir about an interesting life to bitch about taxes might not have been the best idea.
June 16, 2023
Interesting
August 25, 2024
A nice walk down memory lane for someone who lived through these news events.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews