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The Powers That Be
A description and analysis of the media of the time and their effect on politics, events, and the public at large. It focuses particularly on the CBS network, Time Incorporated, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. Along with the media, the discussion covers the people who own and operate the media, particularly these media.
792 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
516 people are currently reading
1994 people want to read
About the author
David Halberstam
97 books857 followersDavid Halberstam was an American journalist and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and later, sports journalism. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964.
Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, he covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement.
In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for The New York Times. While there, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. In 1963, he received a George Polk Award for his reporting at the New York Times. At the age of 30, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.
Halberstam's most well known work is The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam focused on the paradox that those who shaped the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America—"the best and the brightest"—and yet those same individuals were responsible for the failure of the United States Vientnam policy.
After publication of The Best and the Brightest in 1972, Halberstam plunged right into another book and in 1979 published The Powers That Be. The book provided profiles of men like William Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time magazine, Phil Graham of The Washington Post—and many others.
Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of sports, publishing The Breaks of the Game, an inside look at the Bill Walton and the 1978 Portland Trailblazers basketball team; an ambitious book on Michael Jordan in 1999 called Playing for Keeps; and on the pennant race battle between the Yankees and Red Sox called Summer of '49.
Halberstam published two books in the 1960s, three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980s, and six books in the 1990s. He published four books in the 2000s and was on a pace to publish six or more books in that decade before his death.
David Halberstam was killed in a car crash on April 23, 2007 in Menlo Park, California.
Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, he covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement.
In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for The New York Times. While there, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. In 1963, he received a George Polk Award for his reporting at the New York Times. At the age of 30, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.
Halberstam's most well known work is The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam focused on the paradox that those who shaped the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America—"the best and the brightest"—and yet those same individuals were responsible for the failure of the United States Vientnam policy.
After publication of The Best and the Brightest in 1972, Halberstam plunged right into another book and in 1979 published The Powers That Be. The book provided profiles of men like William Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time magazine, Phil Graham of The Washington Post—and many others.
Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of sports, publishing The Breaks of the Game, an inside look at the Bill Walton and the 1978 Portland Trailblazers basketball team; an ambitious book on Michael Jordan in 1999 called Playing for Keeps; and on the pennant race battle between the Yankees and Red Sox called Summer of '49.
Halberstam published two books in the 1960s, three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980s, and six books in the 1990s. He published four books in the 2000s and was on a pace to publish six or more books in that decade before his death.
David Halberstam was killed in a car crash on April 23, 2007 in Menlo Park, California.
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December 2, 2020
David Halberstam's The Powers That Be chronicles how America's leading media companies shape public opinion, and in particular their fraught relationship with politicians. The book focuses on Henry Luce, the founder of Time/Life whose missionary zeal on his pet issues often overwhelms objectivity; CBS's various producers (Frank Stanton, Fred Friendly) and personalities (Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite) who argue about the line between entertainment and information; the Chandlers, who turned the Los Angeles Times into a mouthpiece for conservative politics; Phil and Katharine Graham of The Washington Post, who openly befriended Kennedy and Johnson while trying to build their struggling paper's reputation. Halberstam's book is filled with vivid portraits of reporters, anchors and politicians, and his scabrous portrait of the media's imperfect coverage of events from McCarthyism to Vietnam and Watergate. Bolstered by their owner's personal opinions, afraid of losing readers or viewers, afraid of losing access to politicians, they skew events, soft-pedal stories and swallow dubious official lines that undercut their credibility. Written in 1979, Halberstam's book is undoubtedly dated; in an age of cable news and "alternative facts," it's hard to argue that portrait of a near-monolithic media matches our current climate. But there's no doubt that the key lessons (of press outlets controlled by mercurial owners, afraid of angering the Establishment and obsessed with the bottom line) remain relevant all these years later.
December 20, 2017
This week, I finished two books that both merit extremely high praise. One is Andrew Bacevich's most recent study of America's ineptitude at trying to subdue the Greater Middle East, and the second is this book by David Halberstam.
Halberstam's premature death from a car accident in 2007 marked a great loss for American journalism, and thus, I would argue, for America itself. Why did it not cause a greater uproar than it did? Nevertheless, he left behind a monumental library of books analyzing his most famous topic, Vietnam (The Best and the Brightest on the short list of books one must read, perhaps must read twice, to qualify as literate on the subject), baseball (several on wildly successful clubs during different eras of sport), the car industry (The Reckoning), the Korean War (The Coldest Winter)--which solidified for me a dislike of Douglas MacArthur I never expect to overcome.
But in this work, The Powers That Be, Halberstam centers his laser on his own profession: the media. He covers the major newspapers--the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times--the major television empires (CBS especially, charting its ascendancy out of Edward R. Murrow's timeless reportage from London during the Blitz)--and magazines, particularly Time and Life. His technique replicates the template that serves him so well across so many varied subject areas: to very minutely anatomize a handful of personalities. To understand the machine through the machinist. And I have always found Halberstam's instincts unparalleled. In The Best and the Brightest, he was able to divine the depths of men as murky as McNamara and Rusk, Bundy and Westmoreland, and most insightfully, the tortured President Johnson, in a way that served to illuminate motive and the ambush of intentions by reality. In The Powers That Be, he does this again and much more, culminating in his masterful examination of the Watergate crisis and Richard Nixon caught in the beartrap of his own paranoia and unease. Despite having read much about Watergate, and about Nixon, I can attest to feeling myself newly informed. It was a devastating portrait on one level, but ultimately heartening, because ultimately, as Halberstam so cleanly reveals, the system did in fact work and corruption and naked ambition were arrested. But this national tragedy incurred costs that remain with us today, at a time of similarly painful political dysfunction. I wish he were here to diagnose the players, to predict the outcomes.
I cannot recommend this book too highly. It's a tremendous foray into the basic assumption that the First Amendment's provision to protect the freedom of the press, in all its manifestations, is an implicitly healthy one and abandoned only with supreme disregard for the wellsprings of freedom.
Halberstam's premature death from a car accident in 2007 marked a great loss for American journalism, and thus, I would argue, for America itself. Why did it not cause a greater uproar than it did? Nevertheless, he left behind a monumental library of books analyzing his most famous topic, Vietnam (The Best and the Brightest on the short list of books one must read, perhaps must read twice, to qualify as literate on the subject), baseball (several on wildly successful clubs during different eras of sport), the car industry (The Reckoning), the Korean War (The Coldest Winter)--which solidified for me a dislike of Douglas MacArthur I never expect to overcome.
But in this work, The Powers That Be, Halberstam centers his laser on his own profession: the media. He covers the major newspapers--the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times--the major television empires (CBS especially, charting its ascendancy out of Edward R. Murrow's timeless reportage from London during the Blitz)--and magazines, particularly Time and Life. His technique replicates the template that serves him so well across so many varied subject areas: to very minutely anatomize a handful of personalities. To understand the machine through the machinist. And I have always found Halberstam's instincts unparalleled. In The Best and the Brightest, he was able to divine the depths of men as murky as McNamara and Rusk, Bundy and Westmoreland, and most insightfully, the tortured President Johnson, in a way that served to illuminate motive and the ambush of intentions by reality. In The Powers That Be, he does this again and much more, culminating in his masterful examination of the Watergate crisis and Richard Nixon caught in the beartrap of his own paranoia and unease. Despite having read much about Watergate, and about Nixon, I can attest to feeling myself newly informed. It was a devastating portrait on one level, but ultimately heartening, because ultimately, as Halberstam so cleanly reveals, the system did in fact work and corruption and naked ambition were arrested. But this national tragedy incurred costs that remain with us today, at a time of similarly painful political dysfunction. I wish he were here to diagnose the players, to predict the outcomes.
I cannot recommend this book too highly. It's a tremendous foray into the basic assumption that the First Amendment's provision to protect the freedom of the press, in all its manifestations, is an implicitly healthy one and abandoned only with supreme disregard for the wellsprings of freedom.
June 2, 2017
This book tells the story of how media shapes message, not in dry theory but through the individuals involved in developing and using the technology in the mid-20th-century. David Halberstam holds interest consistently for over 1000 pages as he traces mainstream American culture through more than 30 years, showing expertly how points of progress also come with their own problems.
Even though the media landscape is vastly different than the one he leaves in the early 80s, tracing the trends with him leaves the reader feeling smarter in evaluating our current messages and messengers. You won't look at them as emerging day before yesterday but instead as the logical heirs two patterns decades in the making.
Even though the media landscape is vastly different than the one he leaves in the early 80s, tracing the trends with him leaves the reader feeling smarter in evaluating our current messages and messengers. You won't look at them as emerging day before yesterday but instead as the logical heirs two patterns decades in the making.
May 16, 2015
David Halberstam was an excellent and astute writer. Having read several of his books, I had high expectations for this one and I was not disappointed. This time around, he tackles the (way too important) role of the major media outlets and how they can and do influence the attitudes of their readers/viewers. One thing to note, and this is certainly not a criticism of Halberstam, is that this book (written in 1979) is now quite dated. It was re-released in 2000, and he provided an introduction then saying that he felt like the book had been written in another age. Fifteen years later, were he still alive, I am quite sure that he would say the same thing again.
Halberstam focuses on four major entities: Time, CBS, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. Occasional commentary is also included on The New York Times, but Halberstam deliberately tries to avoid delving too deep into that paper - saying that he could be viewed as prejudiced for/against it since he was a former Times reporter in the 1960s. One cannot argue with his thinking on that matter - he strove to be eminently fair and above-board as a journalist. Nonetheless, by taking that route, he deprives the reader of the benefit of gaining valuable insight into how the country's most powerful and influential newspaper operated. I think that, had he written - even briefly - about some of his own experiences while working for the Times, it would have been informative and engaging.
Halberstam traces the evolution of "modern" (I say modern because look how quickly media changes) media from the radio days of FDR in the 1930s to the mid 1970s and Watergate. Halberstam particularly focuses on how politicians, and Presidents specifically (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon) used the media for their own benefit - and, in the cases of Johnson and Nixon, how their respective obsessions with the controlling the media backfired on both of them.
He covers CBS as it transitioned from a large radio network into TV. Bill Paley, the Chairman and founder of CBS, comes across as an egomaniac and the ultimate company man. These chapters were really good, as Halberstam focused on the 1960 debates between Kennedy and Nixon, the growing influence of TV throughout the 1950s (including televising the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954), how it impacted the country's view of the Vietnam War and then helped open everyone's eyes about Watergate.
Much of the portion on the Washington Post surrounded the paper's breakout coverage of Watergate. This truly put the paper on the national map, after it had been a poorly-run and disrespected paper into the 1950s. Halberstam traces the Los Angeles Times mainly to show how the paper played an enormously crucial role in the rise of Richard Nixon.
While I understand why he chose these particular media giants to write about, I was disappointed in that he did not include a Midwest paper, such as the Chicago Tribune or the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I thought that an inclusion of one of those papers would have helped to balance out the overall portrait that he was trying to paint. Also, focusing on CBS at the almost total exclusion of NBC seemed to limit the sections concerning television. And, on a side note, he barely mentions PBS. I thought that at least some discussion should involve the role and influence, limited as it may or may not be, of public television.
Grade: A-
Halberstam focuses on four major entities: Time, CBS, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. Occasional commentary is also included on The New York Times, but Halberstam deliberately tries to avoid delving too deep into that paper - saying that he could be viewed as prejudiced for/against it since he was a former Times reporter in the 1960s. One cannot argue with his thinking on that matter - he strove to be eminently fair and above-board as a journalist. Nonetheless, by taking that route, he deprives the reader of the benefit of gaining valuable insight into how the country's most powerful and influential newspaper operated. I think that, had he written - even briefly - about some of his own experiences while working for the Times, it would have been informative and engaging.
Halberstam traces the evolution of "modern" (I say modern because look how quickly media changes) media from the radio days of FDR in the 1930s to the mid 1970s and Watergate. Halberstam particularly focuses on how politicians, and Presidents specifically (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon) used the media for their own benefit - and, in the cases of Johnson and Nixon, how their respective obsessions with the controlling the media backfired on both of them.
He covers CBS as it transitioned from a large radio network into TV. Bill Paley, the Chairman and founder of CBS, comes across as an egomaniac and the ultimate company man. These chapters were really good, as Halberstam focused on the 1960 debates between Kennedy and Nixon, the growing influence of TV throughout the 1950s (including televising the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954), how it impacted the country's view of the Vietnam War and then helped open everyone's eyes about Watergate.
Much of the portion on the Washington Post surrounded the paper's breakout coverage of Watergate. This truly put the paper on the national map, after it had been a poorly-run and disrespected paper into the 1950s. Halberstam traces the Los Angeles Times mainly to show how the paper played an enormously crucial role in the rise of Richard Nixon.
While I understand why he chose these particular media giants to write about, I was disappointed in that he did not include a Midwest paper, such as the Chicago Tribune or the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I thought that an inclusion of one of those papers would have helped to balance out the overall portrait that he was trying to paint. Also, focusing on CBS at the almost total exclusion of NBC seemed to limit the sections concerning television. And, on a side note, he barely mentions PBS. I thought that at least some discussion should involve the role and influence, limited as it may or may not be, of public television.
Grade: A-
March 31, 2021
David Halberstam, "The Powers That Be," might very well be the best structured, conceived, multi-layered historical novel I have ever read. There are enough climaxes and fascinating individuals for at least ten movies.
Mr. Halberstam weaves four entities, CBS, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, into an enthralling narrative of how the media influences politics, and how politicians influence the media.
The climaxes involve the coverage of World War II, The Vietnam war, the political conventions, and finally Watergate and the disreputable administration of Richard Nixon, a paranoid nutjob whose only loyalty was to himself.
The Watergate cover up, and the investigation and groundbreaking reporting are mainly contributed to the Washington Post and its two young reporters, Bernstein and Woodward, but as Mr. Halberstam points out it was Walter Cronkite's TV specials that brought Watergate into the American Living room, with help from Time Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and the NY Times. Yet, it was the hardworking, tireless reporting of the Washington Post that made it all possible.
This is the book that is referenced when students of the media are writing essays on the evolution of TV and the importance of print media and the steadfast desire of reporters to inform and enlighten the American public about issues that expose the depths of corruption in our government.
This book is a masterpiece!!!!!!!
Mr. Halberstam weaves four entities, CBS, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, into an enthralling narrative of how the media influences politics, and how politicians influence the media.
The climaxes involve the coverage of World War II, The Vietnam war, the political conventions, and finally Watergate and the disreputable administration of Richard Nixon, a paranoid nutjob whose only loyalty was to himself.
The Watergate cover up, and the investigation and groundbreaking reporting are mainly contributed to the Washington Post and its two young reporters, Bernstein and Woodward, but as Mr. Halberstam points out it was Walter Cronkite's TV specials that brought Watergate into the American Living room, with help from Time Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and the NY Times. Yet, it was the hardworking, tireless reporting of the Washington Post that made it all possible.
This is the book that is referenced when students of the media are writing essays on the evolution of TV and the importance of print media and the steadfast desire of reporters to inform and enlighten the American public about issues that expose the depths of corruption in our government.
This book is a masterpiece!!!!!!!
July 12, 2012
Another classic by Halberstam, this one focusing on the power and influence of the American media, specifically The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Washington Post and CBS, specifically these media's influence over American politics and policies. As in his other works, Halberstam writes in rich detail that bring his characters to life--from titans like Harry Luce of Time to working reporters. This book begins in the 1950s and concludes in the 1970s.
I found myself especially drawn to the chapters about The Washington Post. Phil Graham was such a brilliant, tragic figure. His wife, Katharine, was perhaps less flashy and charismatic but ultimately served as the triumph of sanity.
I wish I could have met Mr. Halberstam while he was still alive, but am so grateful to have the work he left behind. Although he wrote about the past, his books never feel dated.
Also: Anyone with an interest in writing, the art, the craft, the mechanics of writing, will find much inspiration in his work.
I found myself especially drawn to the chapters about The Washington Post. Phil Graham was such a brilliant, tragic figure. His wife, Katharine, was perhaps less flashy and charismatic but ultimately served as the triumph of sanity.
I wish I could have met Mr. Halberstam while he was still alive, but am so grateful to have the work he left behind. Although he wrote about the past, his books never feel dated.
Also: Anyone with an interest in writing, the art, the craft, the mechanics of writing, will find much inspiration in his work.
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May 16, 2013Halberstam finished The Powers That Be in 1979, just as its subjects; CBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, and the LA Times were about to begin their inexorable decline.
He captures some of these factors, particularly the shift away from family ownership to listed, profit-centred companies, and the political backlash (largely from the Right) as television and investigative reporting both increased Presidential power while simultaneously replacing traditional party politics, becoming Oppositions in their own right.
However, the Internet was still an obscure project run between a few universities, large corporations and the military, its devastating implications for print media and, to a lesser extent, TV news then unfathomed.
Consequently, The Powers That Be is a chronicle of a lost age, its titans Bill Paley, Phil Graham, Otis Chandler and Henry Luce now footnotes and the organisations they founded mere shells. Reading it, one is struck by the overlap between their prime and the height of the American century, both periods bound by many of the same delusions of worth, mission, indispensability and independence from the realities of power.
As the title suggests Halberstam isn't naive about the compromises and complicities of this great joint enterprise but his sympathies remain largely with the journalistic establishment, his portraits just a little too glowing, his praise generous verging on fulsome and his mastery of fascinating detail and anecdote sometimes to the detriment of the bigger picture (among other things, his gloss of the Nixon trip to China as a big stunt hasn't aged well).
An amazing work of research, born of one of the greatest voices in American journalism, the Powers that Be thus seems incomplete, Halberstam's proximity to so many of these great events and players provides a rich but partial portrait of an incredible period.
He captures some of these factors, particularly the shift away from family ownership to listed, profit-centred companies, and the political backlash (largely from the Right) as television and investigative reporting both increased Presidential power while simultaneously replacing traditional party politics, becoming Oppositions in their own right.
However, the Internet was still an obscure project run between a few universities, large corporations and the military, its devastating implications for print media and, to a lesser extent, TV news then unfathomed.
Consequently, The Powers That Be is a chronicle of a lost age, its titans Bill Paley, Phil Graham, Otis Chandler and Henry Luce now footnotes and the organisations they founded mere shells. Reading it, one is struck by the overlap between their prime and the height of the American century, both periods bound by many of the same delusions of worth, mission, indispensability and independence from the realities of power.
As the title suggests Halberstam isn't naive about the compromises and complicities of this great joint enterprise but his sympathies remain largely with the journalistic establishment, his portraits just a little too glowing, his praise generous verging on fulsome and his mastery of fascinating detail and anecdote sometimes to the detriment of the bigger picture (among other things, his gloss of the Nixon trip to China as a big stunt hasn't aged well).
An amazing work of research, born of one of the greatest voices in American journalism, the Powers that Be thus seems incomplete, Halberstam's proximity to so many of these great events and players provides a rich but partial portrait of an incredible period.
January 4, 2010
Having already read David Halberstam's The Summer of '49 and the Teammates, I knew I already liked him as an author. But those two books are non-fiction works about baseball, a sport I dearly love; and The Powers That Be is about the media and how it changed American politics and society. The media is not something I know much about to begin with, so it was daunting to pick-up this 736-pager.
Why read this non-fiction monstrosity (I say "monstrosity" because the hardcover version also features a smaller font)? Well, I watched a special on PBS about the Chandlers of The Los Angeles Times, during which Halberstam is often quoted, and I was interested in reading more about the Chandlers.
I think it took me over a month to get through, but I am glad I did. Essentially the book begins in the FDR era and ends with President Nixon and Watergate. It was amazing to read how Time Inc., CBS, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times played such a large role in shaping America. This is by no means a light, uplifting read. In fact, when I think about all that these media giants did and the influence they had, it makes me a little scared, and I begin to see where all the conspiracy theory comes from. Yikes.
At any rate, this is a great book for anyone who loves history.
Why read this non-fiction monstrosity (I say "monstrosity" because the hardcover version also features a smaller font)? Well, I watched a special on PBS about the Chandlers of The Los Angeles Times, during which Halberstam is often quoted, and I was interested in reading more about the Chandlers.
I think it took me over a month to get through, but I am glad I did. Essentially the book begins in the FDR era and ends with President Nixon and Watergate. It was amazing to read how Time Inc., CBS, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times played such a large role in shaping America. This is by no means a light, uplifting read. In fact, when I think about all that these media giants did and the influence they had, it makes me a little scared, and I begin to see where all the conspiracy theory comes from. Yikes.
At any rate, this is a great book for anyone who loves history.
April 2, 2013
Combining diligent over-reported detail and comically overwrought prose, David Halberstam proves once again that his brilliance lay in the deadline newspaper article or Harper's thumb-sucker. And that is no disrespect, I wish my brilliance lay somewhere, ANYWHERE!
But Halberstam's portentious pronouncements on the meaning of EVERYTHING results in prose so turgidly purple that it is a distraction from the real feat of journalism he has pulled off.
His coverage of the rises and falls of CBS, the Washington Post, and the LA Times has been reported with fresher prose and more accurate detail, but one would need to read several corporate/media biographies to glean it all.This made to skim doorstop is a convenient one stop shopping experience for those who want the broad outlines of media power in the 20th century, sans' all those pesky historians' long view, or ability to analyze events outside of the vacuum of just media coverage to frame events.
Despite this snarkiness, a valuable contribution to future research, with interviews with many names already lost to history.
But Halberstam's portentious pronouncements on the meaning of EVERYTHING results in prose so turgidly purple that it is a distraction from the real feat of journalism he has pulled off.
His coverage of the rises and falls of CBS, the Washington Post, and the LA Times has been reported with fresher prose and more accurate detail, but one would need to read several corporate/media biographies to glean it all.This made to skim doorstop is a convenient one stop shopping experience for those who want the broad outlines of media power in the 20th century, sans' all those pesky historians' long view, or ability to analyze events outside of the vacuum of just media coverage to frame events.
Despite this snarkiness, a valuable contribution to future research, with interviews with many names already lost to history.
January 6, 2008
The Pulitzer Prize winning and Harvard education (in journalism) writer who exposes in this book the media barons who changed the face and perception of the United States forever. Luce, Paley, the Grahams and the Chandlers. before Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch the stage had been set for what we now face where the media controls and alters the world and the way we live. A serious must read not for all of us but particularly for those who work in the media
November 26, 2017
A fascinating look at the history of media and politics in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Not particularly well structured -- the book drops the reader into the narrative and doesn't do much in the way of framing or explanation. Even the sections are blandly labeled "I, II, II, IV" with no unifying theme. The book is incredibly detailed and meticulous in its history -- many, many names are referenced (some with little or no introduction, leading me to Wikipedia the names to figure out who these folks were).
The best parts of this book are in the asides, where the relentless narrative pauses and we hear directly from the author and actually get some interpretation and analysis. The writing is rich, at times overmuch so, but has echoes of an elegance and a beauty of a now-lost age.
Reading this in 2017, almost a half century after Watergate, I'm struck by how ... chummy ... the media (particularly broadcast television) and the political order were with each other. Quite the contrast from our internet-centric media where any blogger can get virally shared on Facebook without approval from anyone important.
A note on the Kindle edition: There are numerous typographical (random punctuation) and spelling errors which lead me to think that this is an OCR scan of a print galley that didn't get particularly well-proofread.
The best parts of this book are in the asides, where the relentless narrative pauses and we hear directly from the author and actually get some interpretation and analysis. The writing is rich, at times overmuch so, but has echoes of an elegance and a beauty of a now-lost age.
Reading this in 2017, almost a half century after Watergate, I'm struck by how ... chummy ... the media (particularly broadcast television) and the political order were with each other. Quite the contrast from our internet-centric media where any blogger can get virally shared on Facebook without approval from anyone important.
A note on the Kindle edition: There are numerous typographical (random punctuation) and spelling errors which lead me to think that this is an OCR scan of a print galley that didn't get particularly well-proofread.
March 10, 2019
A book so throughly of its time that it is bound to feel dated now, when it was first published it opened up the story of America's most powerful media barons, their families and the empires they built: Henry and Clare Booth Luce (Time Life), Bill and Babe Paley (CBS), Norman and Dorothy Chandler and their son Otis (Times Mirror Company), and Phil and Katherine Graham (Washington Post). Add to that Arthur Hays Sulzberger and Iphigene Ochs of the New York Times, the author David Halberstam's employer, and the only one of the five companies still in family hands. Halberstam described this pre-digital media landscape with great personal insight and anecdotal flair at a time when it seemed inconceivable that new technology and market forces would reduce their collective power to shape events. His insider's view written in the recent wake of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers described a highwater mark of American journalism, especially for the print media, and it was diligently researched and told with great flair.
August 25, 2018
Though dated a bit, I still believe this is a great book. Halberstam gives a great insight on how the evolution of television effected politics in general and the power of the executive branch specifically. He also showed the effect it had on print journalism. You can see how the linear evolvement of print, television and the internet has come to dominate politics, both for the good and to it's detriment.
The media today has such great power because of what happened then. Halberstam has a way with words and anecdotes that make this a great read 50 years later. I truly miss his writing and his perceptiveness. They don't make 'em like that anymore, he was a true journalist.
The media today has such great power because of what happened then. Halberstam has a way with words and anecdotes that make this a great read 50 years later. I truly miss his writing and his perceptiveness. They don't make 'em like that anymore, he was a true journalist.
March 5, 2024
Since this book was published in 1979, it now reads as much more The Powers That Were, as neither Time magazine, CBS, the Washington Post, nor the Los Angeles Times are anywhere near as powerful as they were in the 60s and 70s.
Still, as a history of a period since eclipsed, Halberstam's book is a fountain of deep research and fascinating anecdotes regarding the ways these companies were built up and interacted with history. All four were essentially conservative, as were their owners and publishers, though the Post and the Times moved towards the center as the years went on and different owners (younger in the case of the Times, and female in the case of the Post) started running things.
Halberstam wrote for the New York Times in the 60s, and brings himself briefly into the story as he was an early reporter in Vietnam. The broad storyline of the book, after some coverage of the New Deal and WWII (the latter of which was the birthplace of quite a few journalistic reputations) is the career of Richard Nixon. From the early days in California, supported and built up by the LA Times to his days as Vice President (with a lot of interaction with Time magazine) to the Presidential race in 1960 when CBS (and other networks) helped bring him down without any actual intention of doing so to the entanglement in Vietnam (covered by all four publications/network) and the 1968 election on through Watergate (with the Post, as we all know, thanks to Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) dug up enough dirt to lead to Nixon's resignation, Tricky Dick is the recurring character of the book.
If you've read Halberstam before, you know he can tell stories, but you also may remember - I'd forgotten, since it's been a while - that he tends to repeat his points in subsequent sentences. This 740 page book could easily have been cut to 500 with some judicious editing of things like (to pull at random from page 265): "He loved being governor, he was an extremely popular governor, and he did not want to run for the Senate. He did not want to lose a Senate seat, and for that matter he did not particularly want to win one either." this refers to Goody Knight. Admittedly, there is nuance gained in that second sentence, but it could have been done quicker.
Oh, well, I was glad to find the book, and while I'm puzzled that in all the chapters on CBS (focusing 99% on news), the show 60 Minutes is never even mentioned, I still learned a lot about the way things used to be behind the scenes.
Still, as a history of a period since eclipsed, Halberstam's book is a fountain of deep research and fascinating anecdotes regarding the ways these companies were built up and interacted with history. All four were essentially conservative, as were their owners and publishers, though the Post and the Times moved towards the center as the years went on and different owners (younger in the case of the Times, and female in the case of the Post) started running things.
Halberstam wrote for the New York Times in the 60s, and brings himself briefly into the story as he was an early reporter in Vietnam. The broad storyline of the book, after some coverage of the New Deal and WWII (the latter of which was the birthplace of quite a few journalistic reputations) is the career of Richard Nixon. From the early days in California, supported and built up by the LA Times to his days as Vice President (with a lot of interaction with Time magazine) to the Presidential race in 1960 when CBS (and other networks) helped bring him down without any actual intention of doing so to the entanglement in Vietnam (covered by all four publications/network) and the 1968 election on through Watergate (with the Post, as we all know, thanks to Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) dug up enough dirt to lead to Nixon's resignation, Tricky Dick is the recurring character of the book.
If you've read Halberstam before, you know he can tell stories, but you also may remember - I'd forgotten, since it's been a while - that he tends to repeat his points in subsequent sentences. This 740 page book could easily have been cut to 500 with some judicious editing of things like (to pull at random from page 265): "He loved being governor, he was an extremely popular governor, and he did not want to run for the Senate. He did not want to lose a Senate seat, and for that matter he did not particularly want to win one either." this refers to Goody Knight. Admittedly, there is nuance gained in that second sentence, but it could have been done quicker.
Oh, well, I was glad to find the book, and while I'm puzzled that in all the chapters on CBS (focusing 99% on news), the show 60 Minutes is never even mentioned, I still learned a lot about the way things used to be behind the scenes.
April 1, 2009
Halberstam is a fine writer. Or should I say, his research assistants know their ways around good stories. At any rate, an imperfect but enjoyable story that is mostly accurate and makes for a good read.
July 14, 2013
What I really knew about media and media ownership as a college freshman was next to nil, but, luckily, this was assigned reading in Father Schroth's Intro to Mass Communications class. Several light bulbs turned on at once that semester, I recall.
April 20, 2018
A fascinating and detailed dive into the rise of the modern media empire, as personified by Luce's Time, Paley's CBS, The Graham's Washington Post, and The Chandler's Times-Mirror. Halberstam builds the narrative of the rise of these media giants around the families and personalities that dominated their early rise to prominence and control, using them as case studies for how the media reported, controlled, and increasingly drove the news narrative and became staggeringly wealthy.
He begins the tale in the 30's and 40's, which is when radio really began blowing up and Bill Paley started getting into the game. He follows things through WWII, moving on to McCarthyism, Vietnam, and finally Watergate as the major story touchstones, with all of the presidents in between examined to varying degrees.
Halberstam, as much as anyone ever has, gets inside the inner decision-making of all of these companies, showing how the choices they made and the personalities in control influenced not only their own fortunes but the country's as well. Whether its Phil Graham helping mastermind the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 in a naked attempt to aid Lyndon Johnsons quest for the presidency, or Buff Chandler working her husband Norman to create a level of independence and journalistic standards on the LA Times even as they controlled Republican politics in California, or Harry Luce crusading for Chiang in China Halberstam puts the reader right in the middle of it.
Every significant political moment, every major news event, and big-time scandal Halberstam shows how the media either put it together or ignored it or mastered it or failed on it. A load of time is spent on Vietnam (unsurprisingly with Halberstam's background), and its very well done showing just how editors stuck in their safe towers failed the country time and time again. He does a great job on McCarthy as well, with Murrow and CBS taking center stage, and the details on Watergate are very well done too. There's a fairly significant miss on civil rights, though; not nearly enough time is spent on that part of the 60's, IMHO.
There's a couple of other odd moments: Harry Luce dies well before the end of the book, yet it gets just a passing mention until the epilogue. For the most part, Otis Chandler fades out of the narrative once things have shifted to Watergate, which seems strange too, even if he might not have been active in the story. Considering how entangled the Times was in Nixon's career, it feels like there should have been more there.
But its still a terrific compelling book, filled with important history and inside looks at big personalities whose influence on the media still resonate today, even though most of them are long gone. More than just a reporter or scriber of facts, Halberstam is a fantastic writer and the prose is amazing.
A must read for anyone interested in American media or the turbulent post-WWII period leading to Watergate.
He begins the tale in the 30's and 40's, which is when radio really began blowing up and Bill Paley started getting into the game. He follows things through WWII, moving on to McCarthyism, Vietnam, and finally Watergate as the major story touchstones, with all of the presidents in between examined to varying degrees.
Halberstam, as much as anyone ever has, gets inside the inner decision-making of all of these companies, showing how the choices they made and the personalities in control influenced not only their own fortunes but the country's as well. Whether its Phil Graham helping mastermind the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 in a naked attempt to aid Lyndon Johnsons quest for the presidency, or Buff Chandler working her husband Norman to create a level of independence and journalistic standards on the LA Times even as they controlled Republican politics in California, or Harry Luce crusading for Chiang in China Halberstam puts the reader right in the middle of it.
Every significant political moment, every major news event, and big-time scandal Halberstam shows how the media either put it together or ignored it or mastered it or failed on it. A load of time is spent on Vietnam (unsurprisingly with Halberstam's background), and its very well done showing just how editors stuck in their safe towers failed the country time and time again. He does a great job on McCarthy as well, with Murrow and CBS taking center stage, and the details on Watergate are very well done too. There's a fairly significant miss on civil rights, though; not nearly enough time is spent on that part of the 60's, IMHO.
There's a couple of other odd moments: Harry Luce dies well before the end of the book, yet it gets just a passing mention until the epilogue. For the most part, Otis Chandler fades out of the narrative once things have shifted to Watergate, which seems strange too, even if he might not have been active in the story. Considering how entangled the Times was in Nixon's career, it feels like there should have been more there.
But its still a terrific compelling book, filled with important history and inside looks at big personalities whose influence on the media still resonate today, even though most of them are long gone. More than just a reporter or scriber of facts, Halberstam is a fantastic writer and the prose is amazing.
A must read for anyone interested in American media or the turbulent post-WWII period leading to Watergate.
March 29, 2018
THE POWERS THAT BE by David Halberstam
David Halberstam is at his best in this wonderful look back at the personalities and media institutions that molded the world we live in and the times that brought out their genius.
The Washington Post, Time, and CBS were certainly oft seen in my home growing up. My dad subscribed to Time, bought The Post when available in Lebanon County, PA, and watched Cronkite every evening. We did not see the LA TIMES. What I learned through Halberstam was that when these institutions changed, my dad changed, moving left politically.
A joy from this book was learning about journalists, print, radio, and television I’ve admired for many years. Among them were the wonderful reporters of CBS like Charles Collingwood, Richard C. Hottlet, Eric Severeid, and, of course, Edward R. Murrow. The Time segment told of John Hersey, whose book Hiroshima was a favorite long ago, and Theodore H. White, who I remember as author of THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT series of books from the 60’s and 70’s, and also a bluff answer by Karen Valentine on Hollywood Squares, even though she seemed to have no idea who he was.
Halberstam's section focusing on Vietnam is not only enlightening of that era but of this one. In telling of the final years of Walter Lippmann he writes of the division in Washington over the war, a chasm between hawks and doves, and that nothing, save the Civil War, had divided the nation as such. We see such a climate today with the presidency of Donald Trump.
I am reading this book while also reading HALF EMPTY books David Rakoff. A comment by Halberstam about Edward R. Murrow illustrates the difference between the authors. Halberstam writes in the language of the ordinary person. Rakoff's flowery prose, probably considered good writing, sometimes leaves the reader wondering what it was about.
The only deficiency I see in this book is the proofreading and editing. Perhaps it is unique to the Kindle edition. Punctuation marks are overused: periods are placed seemingly at random; commas used instead of semicolons. There are also misspellings and extra words inserted. I found one name changed. While all this does not diminish the brilliant content of the book, it does diminish its quality, for it disturbs the rhythm of reading. Nevertheless,
Five stars
Sent from my iPhone
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The information contained in this email is legally privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any viewing, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this email message is strictly prohibited. If you have received and/or are viewing this email in error, please immediately notify the sender by reply email, and delete this email from your system.
David Halberstam is at his best in this wonderful look back at the personalities and media institutions that molded the world we live in and the times that brought out their genius.
The Washington Post, Time, and CBS were certainly oft seen in my home growing up. My dad subscribed to Time, bought The Post when available in Lebanon County, PA, and watched Cronkite every evening. We did not see the LA TIMES. What I learned through Halberstam was that when these institutions changed, my dad changed, moving left politically.
A joy from this book was learning about journalists, print, radio, and television I’ve admired for many years. Among them were the wonderful reporters of CBS like Charles Collingwood, Richard C. Hottlet, Eric Severeid, and, of course, Edward R. Murrow. The Time segment told of John Hersey, whose book Hiroshima was a favorite long ago, and Theodore H. White, who I remember as author of THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT series of books from the 60’s and 70’s, and also a bluff answer by Karen Valentine on Hollywood Squares, even though she seemed to have no idea who he was.
Halberstam's section focusing on Vietnam is not only enlightening of that era but of this one. In telling of the final years of Walter Lippmann he writes of the division in Washington over the war, a chasm between hawks and doves, and that nothing, save the Civil War, had divided the nation as such. We see such a climate today with the presidency of Donald Trump.
I am reading this book while also reading HALF EMPTY books David Rakoff. A comment by Halberstam about Edward R. Murrow illustrates the difference between the authors. Halberstam writes in the language of the ordinary person. Rakoff's flowery prose, probably considered good writing, sometimes leaves the reader wondering what it was about.
The only deficiency I see in this book is the proofreading and editing. Perhaps it is unique to the Kindle edition. Punctuation marks are overused: periods are placed seemingly at random; commas used instead of semicolons. There are also misspellings and extra words inserted. I found one name changed. While all this does not diminish the brilliant content of the book, it does diminish its quality, for it disturbs the rhythm of reading. Nevertheless,
Five stars
Sent from my iPhone
--
The information contained in this email is legally privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any viewing, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this email message is strictly prohibited. If you have received and/or are viewing this email in error, please immediately notify the sender by reply email, and delete this email from your system.
August 2, 2020
This work reminds me how much we miss David Halberstam. This has been one of my "on the plane/on the road" books for quite a while ... reading a few pages here and there before nodding off in the hotel room. It took me a while to get through it, but it was easy to pick up where we left off because of the style and structure of the work (for the most part).
If you've read any of Halberstam's work (Summer of '49), this is familiar territory. His style is evident immediately. He had a commanding grasp of the events of the mid-20th Century, and he had a remarkable ability to paint detailed pictures of the men (and women) who laid the foundation of America's media institutions in their heyday -- in a large part based on first-hand experience.
The latter part of the work seems to drag a bit as he dwells on some of the inside baseball at CBS, and, based on his experiences with his media colleagues and foreign policy and military contacts during the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, he has many axes to grind. Still, this is a great work and highly recommended for students of journalism, those who have a similar interest in the intersection of media and politics in the U.S. following the Second World War -- and those who want to understand how our current media environment has evolved. I only wish Halberstam were alive today to comment.
If you've read any of Halberstam's work (Summer of '49), this is familiar territory. His style is evident immediately. He had a commanding grasp of the events of the mid-20th Century, and he had a remarkable ability to paint detailed pictures of the men (and women) who laid the foundation of America's media institutions in their heyday -- in a large part based on first-hand experience.
The latter part of the work seems to drag a bit as he dwells on some of the inside baseball at CBS, and, based on his experiences with his media colleagues and foreign policy and military contacts during the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, he has many axes to grind. Still, this is a great work and highly recommended for students of journalism, those who have a similar interest in the intersection of media and politics in the U.S. following the Second World War -- and those who want to understand how our current media environment has evolved. I only wish Halberstam were alive today to comment.
December 11, 2024
Halberstam provides a political history of news media primarily through the eyes of the owners, reporters and editors at CBS, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Other media outlets are touched on, but these are the keys. While giving an interesting history of the early days of each of these media, almost half the book concentrates on the final 15 years before the book was published - 1963 to 1978, and the Vietnam War and Watergate.
The book covers a cast of hundreds within the four primary news outlets, and Halberstam provides excellent mini-biographies of most of the players, and much greater depth for key players.
There are any number of media histories out there today. This one focuses on how the media related to political figures. There were often major conflicts between owners and managers and their reporters and columnists. This was especially true during the Vietnam War when reporters in the field saw direct contradictions between the reality they saw and the story the White House (of several Presidents) told their buddies in the executive offices.
This is a great behind-the-scenes look at events we baby boomers lived through but perhaps didn't completely understand.
The book covers a cast of hundreds within the four primary news outlets, and Halberstam provides excellent mini-biographies of most of the players, and much greater depth for key players.
There are any number of media histories out there today. This one focuses on how the media related to political figures. There were often major conflicts between owners and managers and their reporters and columnists. This was especially true during the Vietnam War when reporters in the field saw direct contradictions between the reality they saw and the story the White House (of several Presidents) told their buddies in the executive offices.
This is a great behind-the-scenes look at events we baby boomers lived through but perhaps didn't completely understand.
August 21, 2025
Writing in 1979, Halberstam traces the history of CBS News, the Washington Post, the LA Times and Time Magazine. While the news landscape has changed massively in 45 years it's still an excellent history, showing how the companies developed in different ways: Bill Paley of CBS realizing the power of radio; the LA Times, whose owners saw it mostly as a tool to make them rich; the WaPo, which for years was a local paper for a small town, not a national organ. The book looks at how they changed politics and politics changed them, from FDR's fireside chats to the desperate need for access to high-level sources.
Despite the 45 year gap it's still relevant in showing how the news media caving in to Trump isn't unprecedented. Sure, Edward R. Murrow took on Joe McCarthy but CBS was so uncomfortable, Murrow had to pay for advertising out of his own pocket. As TV time became more lucrative, there was less available for news. By the time the book came out, as Halberstam shows, the companies are all corporate, all obsessed with keeping up the stock price, and none of that is good for news.
A doorstop book but worth the reading.
Despite the 45 year gap it's still relevant in showing how the news media caving in to Trump isn't unprecedented. Sure, Edward R. Murrow took on Joe McCarthy but CBS was so uncomfortable, Murrow had to pay for advertising out of his own pocket. As TV time became more lucrative, there was less available for news. By the time the book came out, as Halberstam shows, the companies are all corporate, all obsessed with keeping up the stock price, and none of that is good for news.
A doorstop book but worth the reading.
Read
December 23, 2022I have read this book no fewer than six times because media history is catnip to me. Halberstam dives into the history of five legacy media monoliths: CBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Time-Life. In typical Halberstam fashion, he immerses you into every detail and introduces you to heroes and villains. It's not hard to figure out who is who, although I always found it interesting that on the CBS parts--the book is not written linear, but bounces between companies--network president Frank Stanton wears Halberstam's villain's cape. Not sure why, when Bill Paley pulled all the strings, but apparently, Halberstam didn't like Frank.
I thought it was a bit uneven, with CBS and the New York Time seeming to get the most space. I would have liked to know more about my hometown paper, the LA Times. And delving more into Time-Life's other pubs other than Time Magazine would have been nice. But overall, this is a brilliant piece of media history that belongs in any communications curriculum.
I thought it was a bit uneven, with CBS and the New York Time seeming to get the most space. I would have liked to know more about my hometown paper, the LA Times. And delving more into Time-Life's other pubs other than Time Magazine would have been nice. But overall, this is a brilliant piece of media history that belongs in any communications curriculum.
December 30, 2021
I purchased this book approximately 35 years ago and never got around to reading it, shelved it in one of my book cases and forgot about it. A few months ago I was looking for something to read (with Covid and all) and I picked it up because I had meant to read it long ago. It is a jewel of a book that is fascinating to read because it is about the news business activities of William Daley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time Inc., the Chandler family of The Los Angeles Times and Phil Graham and his wife Kay Graham of the Washington Post. The book was published in 1979 at a time when there was no social media or even many personal computers so that most of the powers that be were indeed the above mentioned media outlets. The influence that they had on the political, social, and cultural life of America was enormous. Reading the book in the 21st century provides a fascinating look back on life during that time and I highly recommend it.
May 23, 2023
I’ve read several Halberstam books and have thoroughly enjoyed previous works of his that I had read. This book is an exception. The tale is, like others of his works, indeed interesting. Astonishingly though, the editing of this work is so horrendous as to be distracting! The book is full of sentences that aren’t sentences and countless run ons. In the epilogue, two entire, lengthy, and nearly identical paragraphs appear twice. In the Kindle edition I read, hyphens likely used to separate portions of words appearing on two lines in a previous print version are retained in the middle of words that are entirely on one line. Obvious typos appear throughout the book. One must wonder why these faults escaped the notice of editors and proofreaders assigned to this book.
October 6, 2023
It seems like they were always there….CBS, the Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times…these were and mostly still are the foundations upon which information is imparted to we citizens.
How did these institutions begin? Who were the personalities that drove these companies to embody the media of the 20th century? Halberstam tells us in a book loaded with amazing anecdotes, brilliant character profiles and sweeping prose. Luce, Palley, Graham, Chandler, Bradlee….never has so much power been wielded by so few .
How they shaped America’s perception of itself in the 20th century is the tale and it’s spellbindingly told.
How did these institutions begin? Who were the personalities that drove these companies to embody the media of the 20th century? Halberstam tells us in a book loaded with amazing anecdotes, brilliant character profiles and sweeping prose. Luce, Palley, Graham, Chandler, Bradlee….never has so much power been wielded by so few .
How they shaped America’s perception of itself in the 20th century is the tale and it’s spellbindingly told.
April 13, 2024
Heavy stuff, lots of names and dramas over a period from the 50s to 70s.
This book is about media and the effect they have on the way people perceive things and events. It also shows the lies, the manipulation of powerful men who thought they knew better. Throughout the 50s to 70s, especially during the Vietnam war, it read like the American public was the worst informed, mislead by both the media and government.
Can’t help but feel that nothing has changed. Powerful men in media and in the government, ever in control of public opinions. The medium might have changed, but the story remains the same.
American democracy is an illusion.
This book is about media and the effect they have on the way people perceive things and events. It also shows the lies, the manipulation of powerful men who thought they knew better. Throughout the 50s to 70s, especially during the Vietnam war, it read like the American public was the worst informed, mislead by both the media and government.
Can’t help but feel that nothing has changed. Powerful men in media and in the government, ever in control of public opinions. The medium might have changed, but the story remains the same.
American democracy is an illusion.
April 1, 2020
This was an exceptionally irresponsible and shitty Halberstam book about the unification of the media and political ruling class in the 20th century. Halberstam is not all bad but his mythologizing and "objective lense" sensibilities made him uniquely limp dick at best and dangerous at worst for tackling this topic. The last 20% threatened to salvage the whole deal as the coverage of Woodward/Bernstein/Nixon felt probably the most tonally appropriate, but everything that came before it was too appalling to be redeemed in any manner.
January 30, 2023
An exhaustive history of four major media companies that established American norms, shaped conversation, and became "the media" in the middle of the 20th century. Essential reading for people studying the last century, media historians, and journalists who want a big picture of the world of news before it was changed by 24 hour cable, the internet, and the rise of social media.
The book is exhaustive, though. Weighs in over 700 pages and while Halberstam gets close to an argument several times, the book ends without an overt thesis. As a landscape painting, however, it's masterful.
The book is exhaustive, though. Weighs in over 700 pages and while Halberstam gets close to an argument several times, the book ends without an overt thesis. As a landscape painting, however, it's masterful.
January 3, 2025
Extremely informative look at the development of American media and the unique characters that drove it's rise, not to mention an entire host of other personalities that were the movers and shakers that inhabited the countries corridors of power during this period. What seems quaint and surely dated now, the driving forces are little different today although more extreme. Greed, corruption and power still rule the day, just much more directly and in your face. Nixon seems fairly innocuous compared to our present Orange Jesus, and that in and of itself is frightening. 5 star book !
April 25, 2021
This otherwise interesting history of some of America’s biggest news brands is held back by the author’s long-winded and repetitive inside baseball storytelling. This big book would have gotten a better review if it were half the length which it most certainly could have been.
It seems like an old relative telling you the same story or detail for the 5th time in the same conversation.
The history itself salvaged points.
It seems like an old relative telling you the same story or detail for the 5th time in the same conversation.
The history itself salvaged points.
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