What do you think?
Rate this book
All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone
A portrait of the twentieth-century independent journalist offers insight into his outspoken, five-decade pursuit of truthful, anti-establishment journalism, in an account that includes coverage of his denouncements of Cold War policies, McCarthyism, and the Vietnam Gulf of Tonkin incident. 25,000 first printing.
592 pages, Hardcover
First published August 29, 2006
14 people are currently reading
161 people want to read
About the author
Myra MacPherson
5 books24 followersFifth book to be published March 4. The Scarlet Sisters: Six Suffrage and Scandal in the Gilded Age.The reads-like-fiction true story of VIctoria Woodhull and Tennie Claflin, Free Lovers who shocked the world and upset the white male power structure fighting for women's equality everywhere--from the board room to the bedroom--in the 1870's.
I was a long time reporter for the Washington Post and wrote for the New York Times. I covered sports when women were not allowed in the press box, let alone the locker room; and covered five national presidential elections. Love reading, theater, movies, sports, partying with family and friends.
All my books are non-fiction; I loved the research, if not the winnowing down and writing. Luckily they have been well received so far.
I was a long time reporter for the Washington Post and wrote for the New York Times. I covered sports when women were not allowed in the press box, let alone the locker room; and covered five national presidential elections. Love reading, theater, movies, sports, partying with family and friends.
All my books are non-fiction; I loved the research, if not the winnowing down and writing. Luckily they have been well received so far.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 3, 2011
I. F. Stone deserves better than this.
A few years ago in the U.S., well-known members of the right-wing chattering classes (henceforth, w-k. m. of the r-w. c. c.), perhaps having discovered that the living are deceptively difficult to bully, turned their attentions to the dead, who are not only in less of a position to object, but also conveniently cannot sue for libel. Armed with the finest cherry-picked facts from the recollections of former KGB operatives (a group not generally known for their high regard for accuracy) plus some publicly-released documents from the KGB archives, w-k. m. of the r-w. c. c. interpreted certain genuine evidence of attempts to recruit a man who met Stone's description to the Kremlin payroll as proof that Stone actually was a Soviet agent. Negative propositions being notoriously difficult to prove, it is impossible to say that Stone was never a Soviet agent. But even the inattentive reader of the accusatory articles by w-k. m. of the r-w. c. c. on this topic will note a gleeful willingness to assume the worst about Stone.
Armed with an understandable sense of outrage both at the accusations directed at her late friend as well as at the general direction that the US was taking at the time (i.e., during the George W Bush administration), Myra MacPherson gathered together newly-released documents and wrote this worshipful biography in Stone's defense. In her admirable desire to defend Stone, MacPherson commits multiple infractions against George Orwell's first and third rules of good writing, as stated “Politics and the English Language”. They are, respectively:
Never use a metaphor that you are used to seeing in print.
If you can cut a word out, then cut it out.
There's something mildly insulting to the reader's intelligence in the desire of the author to make sure that everyone understands that Hitler and Stalin were “two monstrous dictators” (p. 78) and that protesters shot down by the Czar's palace guard in the streets of St. Petersburg in January 1905 died “in the crimson snow” (p. 7). It's as if we're all too dumb to recognize horror when we see it.
Or perhaps the reader resembles the newspaper reporter of the present day, whose character is criticized with great gusto on page 63. The damning indictment of the modern journalist is that he/she often has (1) a briefcase, (b) a mortgage, and (iii) an inclination to drink strong spirits only in moderation. These symptoms, taken together, are conclusive evidence that the contemporary journo is “often comfortable with the status quo of corporate America.” Like today's scribes, we readers may need to be regularly insulted to erode our bourgeois complacency.
There are many places where the text seems to be accompanied by the thumping of Grandma's cane. For example, there is a lot of commentary about the life and career of journalist Walter Lippmann, which the author claims is relevant as a point of comparison to Stone, as an “establishment” journalist vs. Stone's “outsider”. The point of this incessant comparing is not apparent to me; I understood that the two were very different after the first comparison. Also, Lippmann does not appear to meet Stone very often over the course of their long lives, so a reader might reasonably wonder why he keeps popping up like a whack-a-mole. If the answer is not “because the author enjoys criticizing Lippmann”, then my second guess is that, like the guy in David Copperfield who couldn't stop writing about King Charles's head, it's just an impulse beyond the author's control.
I'm not being mean here for the sheer joy of being mean, although I will admit that being mean is one of life's simple pleasures. I'm being mean because I imagine a new generation of modern readers, for whom references to Walter Lippmann, the ancient stereotype of the lovably alcoholic newsman, now-unknown cultural figures like Archie and Edith Bunker (p. 213), and equally-obscure historical events like Edward R. Murrow's “famous 1958 farewell tirade to the TV industry” (p. 345) will convey nothing. These young people will pick up this book (the most recent biography of Stone I'm aware of) with the sincere desire to know what made him a great journalist, but will be unable to find out because the answer, while present, is buried too deeply in a thick cover of bad writing, tedious sarcasm, digressions, and irrelevant detail.
If you admire America's leftists of the 20th century, then this book will confirm your existing ideas and you don't need to read it. If you don't know enough about them to admire them or not, this book will answer your questions only if you invest great time, patience, and attentiveness, but you may abandon it in disgust or boredom first. (If you know that you don't admire them, then you probably won't read this book.)
If you pick up this book to examine evidence that refutes the above-mentioned accusations of w-k. m. of the r-w. c. c., you may skip the bits about the crimson snow and Walter Lippmann by going directly to p. 309.
There are many potential citizen journalists using new media today. They could benefit from studying Stone's technique (e.g., p. 278: “He always told reporters to read documents back to front”). Outsiders like Stone, they need to know more about Stone's unglamorous but vital genius for getting news stories by burrowing patiently into the mountains of documents produced, for both external and internal consumption, by governments, organizations, and businesses, instead of waiting for news to be spoon-fed to them by some self-serving politician or media flack. Occasionally (e.g., p. 209-10, p. 397, p. 425), a useful “how-I-got-that-story” narrative appears in this book. It would have been a better book with more of them.
As an alternative, I recommend reading from the enormous pile of journalism that Stone produced in his lifetime.
In conclusion, I'd like to apologize for this cranky review to my long-suffering wife, who (with love in her heart) bought this book, which I wanted, for my birthday.
A few years ago in the U.S., well-known members of the right-wing chattering classes (henceforth, w-k. m. of the r-w. c. c.), perhaps having discovered that the living are deceptively difficult to bully, turned their attentions to the dead, who are not only in less of a position to object, but also conveniently cannot sue for libel. Armed with the finest cherry-picked facts from the recollections of former KGB operatives (a group not generally known for their high regard for accuracy) plus some publicly-released documents from the KGB archives, w-k. m. of the r-w. c. c. interpreted certain genuine evidence of attempts to recruit a man who met Stone's description to the Kremlin payroll as proof that Stone actually was a Soviet agent. Negative propositions being notoriously difficult to prove, it is impossible to say that Stone was never a Soviet agent. But even the inattentive reader of the accusatory articles by w-k. m. of the r-w. c. c. on this topic will note a gleeful willingness to assume the worst about Stone.
Armed with an understandable sense of outrage both at the accusations directed at her late friend as well as at the general direction that the US was taking at the time (i.e., during the George W Bush administration), Myra MacPherson gathered together newly-released documents and wrote this worshipful biography in Stone's defense. In her admirable desire to defend Stone, MacPherson commits multiple infractions against George Orwell's first and third rules of good writing, as stated “Politics and the English Language”. They are, respectively:
Never use a metaphor that you are used to seeing in print.
If you can cut a word out, then cut it out.
There's something mildly insulting to the reader's intelligence in the desire of the author to make sure that everyone understands that Hitler and Stalin were “two monstrous dictators” (p. 78) and that protesters shot down by the Czar's palace guard in the streets of St. Petersburg in January 1905 died “in the crimson snow” (p. 7). It's as if we're all too dumb to recognize horror when we see it.
Or perhaps the reader resembles the newspaper reporter of the present day, whose character is criticized with great gusto on page 63. The damning indictment of the modern journalist is that he/she often has (1) a briefcase, (b) a mortgage, and (iii) an inclination to drink strong spirits only in moderation. These symptoms, taken together, are conclusive evidence that the contemporary journo is “often comfortable with the status quo of corporate America.” Like today's scribes, we readers may need to be regularly insulted to erode our bourgeois complacency.
There are many places where the text seems to be accompanied by the thumping of Grandma's cane. For example, there is a lot of commentary about the life and career of journalist Walter Lippmann, which the author claims is relevant as a point of comparison to Stone, as an “establishment” journalist vs. Stone's “outsider”. The point of this incessant comparing is not apparent to me; I understood that the two were very different after the first comparison. Also, Lippmann does not appear to meet Stone very often over the course of their long lives, so a reader might reasonably wonder why he keeps popping up like a whack-a-mole. If the answer is not “because the author enjoys criticizing Lippmann”, then my second guess is that, like the guy in David Copperfield who couldn't stop writing about King Charles's head, it's just an impulse beyond the author's control.
I'm not being mean here for the sheer joy of being mean, although I will admit that being mean is one of life's simple pleasures. I'm being mean because I imagine a new generation of modern readers, for whom references to Walter Lippmann, the ancient stereotype of the lovably alcoholic newsman, now-unknown cultural figures like Archie and Edith Bunker (p. 213), and equally-obscure historical events like Edward R. Murrow's “famous 1958 farewell tirade to the TV industry” (p. 345) will convey nothing. These young people will pick up this book (the most recent biography of Stone I'm aware of) with the sincere desire to know what made him a great journalist, but will be unable to find out because the answer, while present, is buried too deeply in a thick cover of bad writing, tedious sarcasm, digressions, and irrelevant detail.
If you admire America's leftists of the 20th century, then this book will confirm your existing ideas and you don't need to read it. If you don't know enough about them to admire them or not, this book will answer your questions only if you invest great time, patience, and attentiveness, but you may abandon it in disgust or boredom first. (If you know that you don't admire them, then you probably won't read this book.)
If you pick up this book to examine evidence that refutes the above-mentioned accusations of w-k. m. of the r-w. c. c., you may skip the bits about the crimson snow and Walter Lippmann by going directly to p. 309.
There are many potential citizen journalists using new media today. They could benefit from studying Stone's technique (e.g., p. 278: “He always told reporters to read documents back to front”). Outsiders like Stone, they need to know more about Stone's unglamorous but vital genius for getting news stories by burrowing patiently into the mountains of documents produced, for both external and internal consumption, by governments, organizations, and businesses, instead of waiting for news to be spoon-fed to them by some self-serving politician or media flack. Occasionally (e.g., p. 209-10, p. 397, p. 425), a useful “how-I-got-that-story” narrative appears in this book. It would have been a better book with more of them.
As an alternative, I recommend reading from the enormous pile of journalism that Stone produced in his lifetime.
In conclusion, I'd like to apologize for this cranky review to my long-suffering wife, who (with love in her heart) bought this book, which I wanted, for my birthday.
May 26, 2012
Fifteen years in the making, and enriched by every minute of that research and writing, Myra MacPherson's All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone was published two years prior to D. D. Guttenplan's follow-up, full-scale biography of the same half-blind, fully deaf, reedy voiced iconoclast. Aside from sharing The Life and Times of and I. F. Stone in their titles, MacPherson's and Guttenplan's books are both written with a clear-eyed veneration of Stone that holds him to account for his faults, foibles, and fails while celebrating the man's stand-alone drive to dig out hidden culprits, dissembled motives and covered-up ramifications. Stone was a constitutionally independent American fact finder and reporter whose gimlet dissections of corporate, governmental and political chicanery triggered fear and wrath throughout the U.S. establishment, putting him on a mainstream media blacklist and at the top of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's hit list. Not only is the history in All Governments Lie relatively recent, it is also repeating itself. This time, however, there seems to be no I. F. Stone to point out what smells wrong.
November 19, 2020
When I finished reading the first chapter of this book I enthusiastically reviewed it to two life long friends and liberals. They had never heard of I F Stone which amazed me although later I would understand why. My attitude toward the book waned as I slogged through it.
Stone was a remarkable writer and journalist. This book probably gave me more information than I needed to know.
But as I read I couldn’t help but think of what a field day Stone would have had during the Trump era which, thankfully, is coming to an end. Over twenty thousand lies from Trump and still counting.
The crux of the review comes from the final chapters which deal with his writing for the New York Review of Books. I remember the first time I saw that publication: I was so enthralled that my sister gave me a subscription for a Christmas present. I found the articles too long and lost my excitement over the publication. Same with this book. Too long.
Three stars waxing
Stone was a remarkable writer and journalist. This book probably gave me more information than I needed to know.
But as I read I couldn’t help but think of what a field day Stone would have had during the Trump era which, thankfully, is coming to an end. Over twenty thousand lies from Trump and still counting.
The crux of the review comes from the final chapters which deal with his writing for the New York Review of Books. I remember the first time I saw that publication: I was so enthralled that my sister gave me a subscription for a Christmas present. I found the articles too long and lost my excitement over the publication. Same with this book. Too long.
Three stars waxing
February 28, 2012
A decent bio of Stone is buried in these 500-ish pages. Even though there is a fair amount to commend in this book and Myra has a lot of interesting things to say about an extremely interesting fellow, the value of the book is obscured by detail overload in areas that are marginally compelling. The ending is also remarkably weak, leaving one hanging. You might enjoy some parts of this book, but the investment of time required to read 500-ish pages is most likely not worth your while. I hope some day they get a good editor and make a better second edition, perhaps cutting it in half and adding a strong ending.
March 3, 2018
You can't close your eyes like that... you just can't the truth should bother your mind...
...
WAKE UP
WAKE UP
WAKE UP
That's how this book should be called.
...
WAKE UP
WAKE UP
WAKE UP
That's how this book should be called.
June 28, 2018
A liberal’s explanation of/apology for Izzy Stone, an incomparable journalist with plenty of lessons to share.
June 4, 2021
Very interesting man. Also a very relevant historical account of the 20s thru the 70s.
August 11, 2012
The definitive biography on the late "Izzy" Stone. This book should be required reading for all journalism students and veteran reporters. Izzy used the public record and publicly available documents to unearth nuggets of information on hot-button issues, such as Vietnam, that other journalists were simply too lazy to dig through. This is how journalism used to be practiced.
Read
June 10, 2008While this book is written by an adoring author it made me a fan as well. He may be unique in his fierce dedication to truth in reporting, including the time gobbling effort to uncover the truth from government which has the tendency named in the books title.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews