Reporter: A Memoir

Seymour M Hersh

Book cover for Reporter: A Memoir
Image for variant 9780307276612
Book cover for Reporter: A Memoir
Image for variant 9780307276612

Reporter: A Memoir

Reporter: A Memoir

Seymour M Hersh

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Description

'Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. Essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over' John le Carré

In the early 1950s, teenage Seymour Hersh was finishing high school and university - while running the family's struggling dry cleaning store in a Southside Chicago ghetto. Today, he is one of America's premier investigative journalists, whose fearless reporting has earned him fame, front-page bylines in virtually every newspaper in the world, a staggering collection of awards, and no small amount of controversy.

Reporter is the story of how he did it. It is a story of slog, ingenuity and defiance, following Hersh from his first job as a crime reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau, through his Pulitzer Prize-winning freelance investigative exposes, to the heights of his reporting for The New York Times and the New Yorker. It is a tale of night-time encounters with great Civil Rights leaders, unauthorised meetings with Pentagon officials, raucous dinners with Canadian soldiers in Hanoi, tense phone calls with Secretaries of State, desperate to save face; of exposing myriad military and political wrongdoing, from My Lai to Watergate to Abu Ghraib, and the cynical cover-ups that followed in Washington and New York. Here too are unforgettable encounters with some of the most formidable figures from recent decades, from Saul Bellow to Martin Luther King Jr., from Henry Kissinger to Bashar al-Assad.

Ultimately, in unfurling Seymour Hersh's life and career, Reporter tells a story of twentieth-century America, in all its excitement and darkness.

About the Author

SEYMOUR M. HERSH has been a staff writer for The New Yorker and The New York Times. He established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism in 1970 when he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his exposé of the massacre in My Lai, Vietnam. Since then he has received the George Polk Award five times, the National Magazine Award for Public Interest twice, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the George Orwell Award, and dozens of other awards. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Critical Reviews

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018 A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year

"What a story. What a life. It's hard to read this book without a tinge of envy and a lot of admiration." --Charles Glass, Times Literary Supplement

"A master class in the craft of reporting." --Alan Rusbridger, The New York Times Book Review

"Reporter is a miracle. . . The stories brim with humor, wit, poignancy, pointillist portraits of brilliant color--above all, [Hersh's] own voice." --Andrew Meier, Bookforum

"One of the most compelling and significant books ever written about American journalism." --Jon Schwarz, The Intercept

"Intimate without ever turning to confession . . . Like all good memoirs, this one shows more than it says, and is a work of conscience as well as memory." --David Bromwich, Times Literary Supplement "Books of the Year"

"[Hersh] is a classic American archetype--the lone warrior on a quest for truth and justice . . . good books about the making of journalism are few and far between, and Hersh's memoir is a welcome addition." --Glenn Frankel, The Washington Post

"Cinematically-detailed and warmly human storytelling that's at once reminiscent of vintage Hersh and also tonally unlike anything else he's ever written . . . Ultimately the book yields up a warts-and-all picture not just of Hersh but of an entire era of journalism." --Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor

"Riveting." --James Bovard, American Conservative

"When it comes time for the next generation of journalists to re-discover what this job is supposed to be about, they can at least read Reporter. It's all in here." --Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

"Hersh has been one of America's premier investigative journalist . . . an untethered operator whose scoops have resulted from veering from the pack. Reporter offers a best-practices guide to journalism as well as an implicit critique of the way it's practiced today." --Michael Massing, The Nation

"The experience of reading Hersh's memoir is like visiting a lost world . . . To put it in a callow way, this stuff is cool." --Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic

"In Reporter, even the footnotes are priceless . . . [the book] has more juicy background, action-packed storytelling and name-drops per page than any book in recent memory, all told in straightforward style. At its center is a profane, dogged, passionate, tireless, old-fashioned reporter who brought to light schisms, coverups and outrages that informed the world." --Claude Peck, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Reading Reporter is to be reminded of the true power of journalism." --Lorraine Berry, Signature

"Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. This book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over." --John le Carré

"Once he catches the spoor of a My Lai, Hersh's tracking is a model of craft and control. He bargains with sources, gains knowledge by pretending to have it, or not have it, already; sneaks around; tricks, cajoles, plays his subjects; and engages in a one-man guerrilla war against an embarrassed U.S. government. He is calculating, cold-blooded, well-behaved, and professional." --Graeme Wood, The American Scholar

"Often reads like a case study in how to write a political thriller . . . A fascinating look at an era when quality reporting was the result of will and determination (and knowing the right contacts). An excellent choice for readers interested in late 20th-century politics." --Library Journal

"Reporter is a captivating memoir that could inspire a new generation of journalists." --Robert Weibezahl, BookPage

"There's gripping journalistic intrigue aplenty as [Hersh] susses out sources and documents, fences with officials, and fields death threats. . . . Hersh himself is brash and direct, but never cynical, and his memoir is as riveting as the great journalistic exposés he produced." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Candid and revelatory . . . Compared to the contemporary field of blogs, bots, and opinion-driven reportage, the last half of the twentieth-century can look like the heyday of honest and critical journalism. But even now, Hersh remains at the vanguard of tenacious and purposeful writers who speak truth to power, and surely he's inspiring the best at work now. Journalism junkies will devour this insider's account of a distinguished career." --Booklist (starred review)

"Outstanding . . . Rarely has a journalist's memoir come together so well, with admirable measures of self-deprecation, transparent pride, readable prose style, and honesty." --Kirkus (starred review)

Publishing Information

Publisher: Vintage
Pub date: 2019-05-14
Length: 400 pages

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