Fat Man in a Middle Seat

Fat Man in a Middle Seat PDF Author: Jack W. Germond
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780375758676
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
For more than forty years, Jack Germond enjoyed an extraordinary career in political reporting. With his trademark no-nonsense style and tremendous wit in abundance, Fat Man in a Middle Seat remembers the personalities that dominated national politics during Germond’s career: Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. Germond writes about the real stuff of politics and captures the details of the reporter’s life on the road—the off-the-record briefings and strategy sessions, countless late nights in bars, and overcrowded Friday-night standby flights. In the words of Tim Russert, this is “quintessential Germond—candid, insightful, and irreverent.”

Fat Man in a Middle Seat

Fat Man in a Middle Seat PDF Author: Jack W. Germond
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780375758676
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
For more than forty years, Jack Germond enjoyed an extraordinary career in political reporting. With his trademark no-nonsense style and tremendous wit in abundance, Fat Man in a Middle Seat remembers the personalities that dominated national politics during Germond’s career: Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. Germond writes about the real stuff of politics and captures the details of the reporter’s life on the road—the off-the-record briefings and strategy sessions, countless late nights in bars, and overcrowded Friday-night standby flights. In the words of Tim Russert, this is “quintessential Germond—candid, insightful, and irreverent.”

Fat Man Fed Up

Fat Man Fed Up PDF Author: Jack W. Germond
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588364089
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
For more than forty years, Jack Germond has been covering politics for Gannett newspapers, the Washington Star, and the Baltimore Sun, and talking politics on the Today show, The McLaughlin Group, and Inside Washington. Now, in Fat Man Fed Up, Germond confronts the most critical issues raised by our election process and offers a scathing but wry polemic about what’s wrong with American politics. Is there any connection between what happens in campaigns and what happens in government? And if not, where does the blame for the discontent lie? Was Tocqueville right? Do we get the leaders we deserve? Indeed, according to Germond, the politicians aren’t the only ones to blame, or even the chief culprits. He describes how he and his colleagues in the news media have been guilty of dumbing-down the political process–and how the voters are too apathetic to demand better coverage and better results. Instead, they simply turn away and too often end up enduring third-rate presidents. This no-sacred-cows manifesto faces the problems many are reluctant to address: • Polls and how they are used and abused by politicians and press to mislead gullible voters. • The critical failure of the press to accurately portray figures in the political realm, from Eugene McCarthy to Barbara Bush to Al Sharpton. • How the complaints about liberal bias in the press miss the real point: whether that bias, if it exists, colors the way editors and reporters work. • The staggering influence of television, and the networks’ inability to provide anything but the most simplistic coverage of politics. • The “big lie” school of campaigning. From “Where’s the beef?” to “compassionate conservatism,” the politics of empty slogans has always placed noise above nuance: Say anything loudly enough and long enough, and voters are bound to mistake it for the truth. Along the way, Germond illustrates his arguments by drawing from his war chest of priceless anecdotes from decades in the business. With his inimitable combination of incisive journalism and sardonic and witty straight talk, Germond guides us through the fog created by candidates and the media. In this timely, outrageous, and compulsively readable book, no one is let off the hook. Fat Man Fed Up is a bracing look at how we never seem to get the truth about the people we’re electing.

Death Comes for the Fat Man

Death Comes for the Fat Man PDF Author: Reginald Hill
Publisher: Seal Books
ISBN: 0307374947
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
There was no sign of life. But not for a second did Pascoe admit the possibility of death. Dalziel was indestructible. Dalziel is, and was, and forever shall be, world without end, amen. Chief constables might come and chief constables might go, but Fat Andy went on forever. Caught in the full blast of a huge explosion, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel lies on a hospital bed, with only a life support system and his indomitable will between him and the Great Beyond. His colleague, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe, is determined to bring those responsible to justice. Pascoe suspects a group called The Templars, and the deeper he digs, the more certain he is that The Templars are getting help from within the police force. The plot is complex, the pace fast, the jokes furious, and the climax astounding. And above it all, like a huge dirigible threatening to break from its moorings, hovers the disembodied spirit of Andy Dalziel.

Fat Man Fed Up

Fat Man Fed Up PDF Author: Jack W. Germond
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588364089
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
For more than forty years, Jack Germond has been covering politics for Gannett newspapers, the Washington Star, and the Baltimore Sun, and talking politics on the Today show, The McLaughlin Group, and Inside Washington. Now, in Fat Man Fed Up, Germond confronts the most critical issues raised by our election process and offers a scathing but wry polemic about what’s wrong with American politics. Is there any connection between what happens in campaigns and what happens in government? And if not, where does the blame for the discontent lie? Was Tocqueville right? Do we get the leaders we deserve? Indeed, according to Germond, the politicians aren’t the only ones to blame, or even the chief culprits. He describes how he and his colleagues in the news media have been guilty of dumbing-down the political process–and how the voters are too apathetic to demand better coverage and better results. Instead, they simply turn away and too often end up enduring third-rate presidents. This no-sacred-cows manifesto faces the problems many are reluctant to address: • Polls and how they are used and abused by politicians and press to mislead gullible voters. • The critical failure of the press to accurately portray figures in the political realm, from Eugene McCarthy to Barbara Bush to Al Sharpton. • How the complaints about liberal bias in the press miss the real point: whether that bias, if it exists, colors the way editors and reporters work. • The staggering influence of television, and the networks’ inability to provide anything but the most simplistic coverage of politics. • The “big lie” school of campaigning. From “Where’s the beef?” to “compassionate conservatism,” the politics of empty slogans has always placed noise above nuance: Say anything loudly enough and long enough, and voters are bound to mistake it for the truth. Along the way, Germond illustrates his arguments by drawing from his war chest of priceless anecdotes from decades in the business. With his inimitable combination of incisive journalism and sardonic and witty straight talk, Germond guides us through the fog created by candidates and the media. In this timely, outrageous, and compulsively readable book, no one is let off the hook. Fat Man Fed Up is a bracing look at how we never seem to get the truth about the people we’re electing.

Lonesome Dreamer

Lonesome Dreamer PDF Author: Timothy G. Anderson
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 080329039X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
American poet and writer John G. Neihardt (1881–1973) possessed an inquiring and spiritual mind. Those qualities came to the fore in Black Elk Speaks, the story of the Lakota holy man Black Elk, for which he is best remembered. Over the course of thirty years he also wrote a five-volume epic poem, A Cycle of the West, which told the story of the settling of the American West. Despite Neihardt’s widespread name recognition, the success of Black Elk Speaks, and a list of critically acclaimed books and poems, Lonesome Dreamer is the first biography of Neihardt in nearly forty years. Timothy G. Anderson describes Neihardt’s life from his humble beginnings in Illinois, to being named poet laureate of Nebraska in 1921, to his appearance on the Dick Cavett Show at the age of ninety. Anderson also delves into Neihardt’s success as a poet far from the East Coast literary establishment, his resistance to modernist movements in poetry, and his wish to understand and describe the experience of the Plains Indians. Offering insight into both his personal and his literary life, this biography reaffirms Neihardt’s place in American literary history, his successes and failures, and his unbreakable spirit.

A Century Turns

A Century Turns PDF Author: William J. Bennett
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 1418584029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A state of the union address as the twentieth century turned into the twenty-first—from the New York Times–bestselling author of America, the Last Best Hope. In A Century Turns, William J. Bennett explores America’s recent and momentous history—the contentious election of 1988, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of global Communism, the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton, the technological and commercial boom of the 1990s, the war on terror, and the election of America’s first black president. Surveying politics and pop culture, economics and technology, war and religion, Bennett pieces together the players, the personalities, the feats and the failures that transformed key moments in the American story. And he captures it all with piercing insight and unrelenting optimism.

The Prince of Darkness

The Prince of Darkness PDF Author: Robert D. Novak
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 0307394719
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 690

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Book Description
Long before Robert Novak became the center of a political firestorm in the Valerie Plame CIA leak scandal, he had established himself as one of the finest—and most controversial—political reporters in America. Now, in this sweeping, monumental memoir, Novak offers the first full account of his involvement in that affair, while also revealing the fascinating story of his remarkable life and career. This is a singular journey through a half century of stories, scandals, and personal encounters with Washington’s most powerful and colorful people. Novak has been a Washington insider since the days when the place was a sleepy southern town and journalism was built on shoe leather and the ability to cultivate and keep sources (not to mention the ability to hold one’s liquor). He has covered every president since Truman, known (personally and professionally) virtually all the big movers and shakers in D.C., and broken a number of the biggest stories—the Plame story, we see here, being far from the most important. In this book, he puts it all into perspective. He also reveals the extraordinary transformations that have fundamentally remade Washington, politics, and journalism—and his own role in those transformations. Moving beyond the “first draft of history” that is daily journalism, Novak can at last tell the stories behind the stories. He vividly recalls encounters with the Kennedys (angry meetings with Bobby, a scary ride home in Jack’s convertible), his unusual relationship with Lyndon Johnson (who hosted Novak’s wedding reception and who, “drunk as a loon,” had to be carried out of a bar by the young newsman), a decidedly odd off-the-record lunch with Ronald Reagan, and his first meetings with George W. Bush—at which the veteran journalist seriously underestimated the future president. We meet other fascinating characters as well, from Deng Xiaoping to Ted Turner to Ezra Pound. Writing with bracing candor, Novak tells us how politics and journalism truly operate at the highest levels, both publicly and behind closed doors. He is equally open about his private experience. He writes frankly about the days when his drinking reflected too closely the boozy ways of the town. He acknowledges times when his job took precedence over his family. He is reflective about his political journey to the right. And he writes more personally than ever before about his spiritual journey, from his early life as a secular Jew to his conversion to Catholicism at the age of sixty-seven. Packed with riveting, never-before-told stories, The Prince of Darkness is a hugely entertaining and equally perceptive view of fifty years in the life of Washington and the people who cover it.

Reporting from Washington

Reporting from Washington PDF Author: Donald A. Ritchie
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199839093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
Donald Ritchie offers a vibrant chronicle of news coverage in our nation's capital, from the early days of radio and print reporting and the heyday of the wire services to the brave new world of the Internet. Beginning with 1932, when a newly elected FDR energized the sleepy capital, Ritchie highlights the dramatic changes in journalism that have occurred in the last seven decades. We meet legendary columnists--including Walter Lippmann, Joseph Alsop, and Drew Pearson --as well as the great investigative reporters, from Paul Y. Anderson to the two green Washington Post reporters who launched the political story of the decade--Woodward and Bernstein. We read of the rise of radio news--fought tooth and nail by the print barons--and of such pioneers as Edward R. Murrow, H. V. Kaltenborn, and Elmer Davis. Ritchie also offers a vivid history of TV news, from the early days of Meet the Press, to Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite, to the cable revolution led by C-SPAN and CNN. In addition, he compares political news on the Internet to the alternative press of the '60s and '70s; describes how black reporters slowly broke into the white press corps (helped mightily by FDR's White House); discusses path-breaking woman reporters such as Sarah McClendon and Helen Thomas, and much more. From Walter Winchell to Matt Drudge, the people who cover Washington politics are among the most colorful and influential in American news. Reporting from Washington offers an unforgettable portrait of these figures as well as of the dramatic changes in American journalism in the twentieth century.

Campaign of the Century

Campaign of the Century PDF Author: Irwin F. Gellman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300245033
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
Based on massive new research, a compelling and surprising account of the twentieth century's closest election The 1960 presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon is one of the most frequently described political events of the twentieth century, yet the accounts to date have been remarkably unbalanced. Far more attention is given to Kennedy's side than to Nixon's. The imbalance began with the first book on that election, Theodore White’s The Making of the President 1960—in which (as he later admitted) White deliberately cast Kennedy as the hero and Nixon as the villain—and it has been perpetuated in almost every book since then. Few historians have attempted an unbiased account of the election, and none have done the archival research that Irwin F. Gellman has done. Based on previously unused sources such as the FBI's surveillance of JFK and the papers of Leon Jaworski, vice-presidential candidate Henry Cabot Lodge, and many others, this book presents the first even-handed history of both the primary campaigns and the general election. The result is a fresh, engaging chronicle that shatters long†‘held myths and reveals the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates.

The Real Making of the President

The Real Making of the President PDF Author: W. J. Rorabaugh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
When John Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, he also won the right to put his own spin on the victory. Rorabaugh cuts through the mythology of this election to explain the operations of the campaign and offer a corrective to Theodore White's flawed classic, 'The Making of the President'.