Deadline Artists—Scandals, Tragedies & Triumphs

October 29, 2012
For this stellar sequel to the previous Deadline Artists collection, veteran journalists Avlon (Independent Nation), Angelo (executive editor of the New York Post), and Louis (host of NY1’s Inside City Hall) assemble another tantalizing sampler of the finest examples of newspaper writing, spotlighting scribes who wrote “short stories that really happened.” The trio divides the book into sections—scandals, tragedies, and triumphs—and orders the pieces chronologically. Whether it’s Nellie Bly in disguise as a Cuban immigrant exposing patient abuse at an insane asylum in 1887, Damon Runyon giving his colorful take on mobster Al Capone for a 1931 column, or Jim Dwyer’s brief tale of a World Trade Center window-washer’s escape on 9/11, the writing is consistently first-rate. Standouts include John Steinbeck’s 1936 column on the plight of dust bowl farmers, Walter Lippman’s insightful 1948 Gandhi profile, and Bob Greene’s sensitive and revealing 1991 column on Michael Jordan. Also on the star-studded journalistic roster are talents like Jack London, H.L. Mencken, Murray Kempton, Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron, and Ellen Goodman. Entertaining and informative, this collection is a timeless celebration of history and its talented recorders. Agent: Ed Victor Ltd. (U.K.).

December 15, 2012
With more and more people predicting the demise of print journalism, here's a reminder of how good it can be. The list of contributor names reads like a journalistic all-star team: Breslin, Buchwald, Dexter, Hecht, Hemingway, Ivens, Kirkpatrick, Lippmann, Mencken, Pyle, Reston, Royko, Runyonand that's just a small selection. This is the kind of book you can open at random and find a gem: H. L. Mencken's commentary on the Scopes Monkey Trial; Damon Runyon's sharp-eyed portrait of Al Capone at the gangster's tax-evasion trial; Art Buchwald's funny-but-also-angry piece about a (fictional) black man's attempt to register for the vote in 1965 Alabama; Jack London's eyewitness account of the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; Mike Royko's incredibly moving 1979 column about the death of his wife; William Laurence's 1945 firsthand account of the bombing of Nagasaki. If you want to know what good and occasionally history-making journalism looks like, this is the book for you. Needless to say, journalism students should consider it required reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)