So this book was written in 1974, before Hume became the obnoxious and scary voice of the conservative media establishment in washington dc. Back in the 70's, reporters were a lot less glamorous and Hume writes affectionately of his time working for the great columnists/muckracker Jack Anderson. Hume was hired to be a reporter/researcher for the column and preceded to help break several big stories. I use the work "break" loosely here though because like a lot of big name journos, Anderson did most of his best work when a story was dropped in his lap. For instance, Hume writes about the scandal that surrounded ITT and contributions it made to the national political conventions in exchange for favorable treatment by the Attorney General. Well of course this story came about because someone gave Hume a memo when the lobbyists for ITT lays everything out. The memo wasn't stolen but was not found - only written about. There are several other sections of the book describing sordid tales from Hume's past but I don't come away with much of a sense of how he made such a name for himself when so much of the work was just anonymous tips.