Johnny Deadline, Reporter: The Best of Bob Greene

by Bob Greene, Bill Mauldin (Foreword)

Johnny Deadline, The Best of Bob Bob Johnny Deadline, The Best of Bob FIRST First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Nelson-Hall, 1976. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is very good with spotting to page ends. Dust jacket is very good. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 316067 Biography & Letters We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!

408 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Robert Bernard Greene, Jr., who writes as Bob Greene, is a journalist.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Ken Heard · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fans of Bob Greene, this is some of his earlier stuff when he was with the Chicago Sun-Times and, in part, while he toured with the Alice Cooper band for his book Billion Dollar Baby. Mr. Greene is a natural talent and you can see him honing his craft early on. He wrote about the horror of a murder in Grant Park in Chicago, but did not really describe the crime scene per se. Instead, he focused on the details around the site: The sounds, the crushed pop can nearby, the looks and words of passersby, etc. He writes also of a young girl who kills her Park Ridge, Ill, family, and he notes the words of those in the street watching the police investigate the homicides.

He is very good at setting pictures, giving us nuggets and sounds, music and atmosphere. He also is brilliant at providing the odd, surreal contrasts of things. Summer breezes and lilting music at murder scenes, festivities of New Year's Eve while a man toils over dirty plates.

There's a large section about government- both Chicago's and the Watergate hearings that really sum up the flavor of the 1970s. Mr. Greene also chronicles the small lives. He watched a worker scrape food off dishes at a restaurant one New Year's Eve and he spoke with a woman who lived in a rough part of Chicago who was constantly tormented. He also writes of sports to a degree. He met with Joe DiMaggio and wrote of his first day as the Mr. Coffee spokesman and he does a brilliant profile of former NBA player Nate "Tiny" Archibald.

It's all here. If you've read Greene before, this is a good look at his roots. If you've never read him, this will give you a chance to start near the beginning of his amazing career.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read the vast majority of Bob Greene's books over the years and liked most of them very much, but this one is a rare exception. This is a collection of his essays that appeared fairly early in his career, in the early-to-mid 1970s.

Greene has grouped the essays by subject matter and provides a paragraph or two at the beginning of each group to sort of tie them together. However, I guess after reading so many of his books this one definitely reads like someone who was still developing his writing style.

Bob Greene (not to be confused by Oprah Winfrey's diet and exercise guru of the same name, who has also written many books--although about diet and exercise-- and who also lives in Chicago), has a writing style that you're either going to love or hate. Many people think his style is too corny or folksy; sometimes that tendency serves him well depending on the book and sometimes it doesn't. Again, if I'd read this years ago before I'd read most all the books he's written since, I might have been more impressed than I am now.

**#47 of 100 books pledged to read/review during 2015**