You Must Remember This: A Reporter's Odyssey from Camalot to Glastnost

by Lansing Lamont

No century chronicles as many milestones as the twentieth. Two world wars. The atomic bomb. Medical breakthroughs by the score. Men on the moon. The birth of the airplane, movies, television, pushbutton phones, and the Internet. The phenomenon of suburbia and the shopping mall. Just for starters.Lansing Lamont spent his childhood hearing stories from the front lines of the business world on his grandfather's knee, and his adult life reporting on the business of the nation at Time Magazine. Forty years after John F. Kennedy's casket was borne aloft before the world's dignitaries in a hushed Washington cathedral, riots and pillaging rocked the Capital in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, and Robert Kennedy died on the blood-soaked floor of a hotel pantry in Los Angeles, Lamont recounts the events that defined the Greatest Generation.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2008

About the author

A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Lansing Lamont was a national political correspondent for Time magazine’s Washington bureau from 1961 – 1968. During that time, he covered the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, as well as the 1964 and 1968 Republication and Democratic conventions and presidential campaigns. He was deputy chief of Time’s London bureau from 1969 – 1971, chief Canada correspondent from 1971-1973, and United Nations bureau chief and world affairs writer from 1973 – 1975.

Lamont currently lives with his wife in New York, where he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. You Must Remember This is his seventh book.

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lamont's memoir of his life is light, chatty, and easy to read. It is by no means a toss-away; rather, it is a serious, if pleased and pleasant, review of this reporter's life, family, and career. If the book lacks depth, it makes up for that in charm and interest.

Part of its charm for me was the world and national events he covered for Time. I do remember most of it, although he's 15 years older than I; and there's a definite tug of "oh, yes" recognition in many of his stories. I'll bet I read much of his coverage, as I was a fan of the magazine in the '60s and '70s. Until Time began so slick and arrogant, its staff's writing was truly superb. Lamont's still is.