Females in Male-Dominated Fields – Page 5 – education and deconstruction.com

Unlimited Partners – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Unlimited Partners, Our American Story” by Bob and Elizabeth Dole, published in 1996.

Born in 1923 in Russell, Kansas, Bob Dole was the second oldest of four children. His small agricultural hometown was plagued by the usual disasters: prairie fires, droughts, tornadoes, grasshoppers, blizzards and dust storms, in addition to politics. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, in November 1923, oil was discovered there. Bob’s father ran a creamery. The family went fishing and hunting.

Bob started attending the University of Kansas thinking he wanted to become a doctor. “By mixing me with all sorts of people, living in a frat house was good preparation for what lay ahead.” Fate threw him for a loop, as he suffered a severe spinal cord injury while serving in WWII. His strong psychological constitution saw him recover sufficient physical ability to earn a law degree, and become a Republican.

In 1960, while running for Congress, Bob distributed free pineapple juice to get name recognition, even though his family had nothing to do with the produce company.

Elizabeth became Bob’s second wife. They had no children together. She was born in 1937 in Salisbury, North Carolina. There were only 24 women out of 550 students in her Harvard Law School class of 1965. One of her classmates criticized her for displacing a white male.

Bob and Elizabeth both served in various leadership positions in the American government through the years. In 1981, Bob helped pass the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, which gave Americans a 25% personal income tax cut over the course of three years. The following year however, to mitigate the financial hangover of that, Congress passed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. Its accounting tricks allegedly reduced the national debt by almost $100 billion through closing the loopholes of the previous bill, plus raising taxes a bit and cutting spending.

Read the book to learn of: Elizabeth’s post-government career; Bob’s high praise for President Ronald Reagan, and harsh criticisms of President Bill Clinton; his proposals for tax reform, and vast generalizations of his views on a host of other political issues. After all, Bob was running for president when the book was published.

Golda – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Golda, the Uncrowned Queen of Israel” by Robert Slater, published in 1981. This pictorial biography described the life of a revered politician and passionate Zionist.

Born in May 1898 in Kiev in Russia’s Pale of Settlement, Golda Meir was one of only two children in her Yiddish-speaking family to survive infancy. In 1906, the family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. However, as a teenager, Meir absconded to her twenty-something sister’s home in Denver, Colorado. Her parents convinced her to come back, where she was permitted to finish her schooling instead of looking for a husband. Like her parents, she believed in the Zionist cause.

After working for a Zionist nonprofit organization in Chicago for a short stint, in December, 1917, Meir eventually found a husband anyway. In May 1921, they moved to Palestine along with her sister’s family and her parents. She started a teaching job. Eventually, they jumped through all the hoops required to get accepted to the kibbutz of Merhavia.

Meir was assigned to do poultry farming. Her husband didn’t like the fact that parents and children had separate living quarters in the kibbutzim. So three years later, when she was ready to bear children, they moved to Tel Aviv, then Jerusalem. She went to work for another Zionist organization, Histradut, traveling and making speeches. As she was a workaholic, she hardly ever saw her family. It was rumored that she had affairs to advance her career.

For a few years after WWII, Meir became an executive member of the Yishuv– trying to save refugees’ lives through smuggling of people and arms via the Jewish intelligence services, and negotiating with the British. In November 1947, the newly formed United Nations voted in favor of a partition consisting of a Jewish state, and an Arab state, in the territory of Palestine.

Meir became a sufficiently prominent figure in the founding of Israel to sign its Declaration of Independence. Ben-Gurion was its first leader; he appointed her minister to Russia. The Soviet bureaucracy under Stalin ignored foreign diplomats. Israel and the USRR weren’t enemies but they weren’t friends, except for when it came to proposing toasts at social gatherings. Then they were friends.

In spring 1949, Meir became labor minister in Ben-Gurion’s cabinet. She argued for open immigration and housing and jobs. She almost bankrupted the government with her social programs. But living standards of Israelis rose dramatically.

Read the book to learn about the rest of Meir’s political career, health, family and her other crosses to bear.

Madam Speaker

The Book of the Week is “Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi’s Life, Times, and Rise to Power” by Marc Sandalow, published in 2008. This was a biography of a workaholic liberal Democrat who achieved a few “female firsts” in politics. It was anti-Pelosi in subtle ways.

Sloppy editing in this book created confusion with regard to Pelosi’s age in three different places:

“…she first won election to Congress in June 1987… the then 53-year old Congresswoman…”

“On March 26, 1940… Nancy Patricia D’Alessandro weighed in at eight and a half pounds.”

“On December 30, 1956… His seventeen year old daughter joined him…”

In addition, the cover photo– of Pelosi hugging a young child (as a prop) in what appeared to be a campaign– was demeaning. The author would never have dared to use such a photo of a male politician doing that. Family is still thought of as an issue for females.

Not that Pelosi didn’t brag about her family in every campaign, but the presence of the child in the photo implied that she couldn’t have achieved what she did without a family (Book cover photos always show a male politician alone).

Perhaps it was part of Pelosi’s appeal, but family should have been irrelevant to her qualifications for holding the offices she held. No male politicians make having a family a major reason for voting for them.

Sadly, due to human nature, the following arguments:

persuasive mudslinging (“Vote for me because my opponent is a Nazi.”)
fiercely loyal party affiliation (“Vote for me because I’m a member of your party– I know you believe every word you hear from our party-funded information sources and that’s all you hear, thank you!”)
ridiculous promises (“Vote for me because I’ll make you rich quick.”)
phony outrage (“Vote for me because- how dare they accuse us?! They started it!”)
creating a common enemy (“Vote for me because, just like you– I hate the media.”) and
appeals to tribal unity (“Vote for me because I’m the same ethnicity / religion / skin color / gender / sexual orientation you are, and my opponent is NOT.”)

more often win elections than a candidate’s ability to act in constituents’ best interests.

Anyway, Pelosi was the youngest of seven children. Her father was a Baltimore politician. Like him, she was a natural. In 1969, she moved with her husband to San Francisco, where, while raising her growing family, started volunteering for various Democratic organizations. Thanks to her father, she already had friends in high places, but she made many more with her driven work ethic and patronage power.

Pelosi served on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors (city council). In 1987, she ran against a gay candidate for Congress. Her pet issues were increasing funding to fight AIDS, preserving the Presidio (a military base) and Chinese human rights.

In 1989, in a legislative proposal, Pelosi favored pressuring China to curb its human rights abuses through otherwise threatening to raise tariffs on Chinese imports to the US. The Congresswoman visited China in September 1991.

According to the author, “Pelosi said prisoners had told her that the conditions in Chinese jails had miraculously improved each year when Congress debated Most Favored Nation status.” It was unclear whether the author’s “miraculously” was meant sarcastically to indicate that China was putting on a show for the United States, and Pelosi was just another naive, bleeding-heart liberal. President Bill Clinton initially agreed with Pelosi and said he would enact the law imposing financial punishment, but then betrayed her in May 1993.

The argument against erecting trade barriers as a punishment for bad behavior is this: Unfortunately, dictators, like leopards, do not usually change their spots. The Chinese leaders would continue to oppress their people, regardless of how much deprivation the goods producers and exporters would suffer due to sanctions. Besides, the leaders would blame the United States for their hardships. Moreover, there would be adverse global economic consequences.

Pelosi was reelected House Whip in late 2001. From the get-go, she opposed the war in Iraq. She presciently “… warned that a war in Iraq would diminish the nation’s standing, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.” She was right on both counts.

The latter count was a rerun of Vietnam: Several times, the president forced Congress to approve additional megabucks to fund the war. Forced, because members were made phobic about putting the lives of American servicepeople at risk due to lack of money for inadequate safety equipment. But due to waste, incompetence and war profiteering, the US military in Iraq didn’t have what they needed, anyway.

Read the book to learn how Pelosi earned her party’s respect (hint– she practiced what she preached), and much more about her.

Angela Merkel

The Book of the Week is “Angela Merkel, Europe’s Most Influential Leader” by Matthew Qvortrup, published in 2016. This is a career biography of a recent Chancellor of Germany. It had a bit of sloppy editing, as politician Friedrich Merz was alternately called “Metz” in several places.

Born in July 1954, Merkel grew up in Hamburg and Templin in East Germany, where her father was a Lutheran theologian at a seminary. Although Communism preaches godlessness, the supervising Soviet government allowed some religious activity among the local citizens. Merkel’s family was spied on by the Stasi- the secret police. It was cost-effective and efficient. For, all the socially dangerous elements (potential subversives) were in one place.

Merkel’s perfectionist nature meant that she graduated at the top of her school classes. Because East Germany was a police state with a Socialist mentality, the people availed themselves of a free university education. Merkel got hers, as well as a doctorate in nuclear physics. In exchange, she was required to work for the government for a specific period. In September 1977, Merkel got married. She divorced in early 1981.

In the autumn of 1989, Merkel started her political career by joining an informal Democratic club. She used every political advantage at her disposal: trilingualism (German, Russian and English), networking skills, strong work ethic and her geographic origin, among other traits.

Upon the collapse of Communism, Merkel’s club converted to a political party. Upon the reunification of East and West Germany, free and fair elections were held for one new government. Merkel became a mouthpiece for her party. In the autumn of 1990, a Cabinet member took a liking to her, hiring her in the communications department. Besides, she was elected as a Member of Parliament, and a month later, a Cabinet minister with a women’s-issues-and families portfolio.

The author’s description of Germany’s government employees was confusing– it was unclear whether the government selected its employees via exams or by appointment. Besides, in November 1991, “Merkel replaced all the top civil servants.” However, the author later wrote, “Respect for civil servants [in Germany]… are well paid, and have life-long careers…”

Anyway, Merkel was tapped for progressively higher government positions– Deputy Chair of her political party, then Minister of the Environment, then Secretary General. Some called her a back-stabber, as in 1999, she had no qualms about using a poison pen in a nationwide publication to excoriate the former Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, and by connotation, his replacement, Wolfgang Schauble. Merkel’s divide and conquer plan worked– the two chancellors attacked each other. In April 2000, she was elected Christian Democratic Union party head.

The media in Germany behaved similarly to that in the U.S. by reporting on Merkel’s hairstyle. They even pressured her into getting married again, even though she was a conservative Christian, rather than a Catholic.

Read the book to learn how Merkel, through shrewd maneuvering, continued to claw her way to the top of the German government in the next six years and what she did when she got there, how she dealt with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and learn which issue prompted Donald Trump to comment on her in 2015: “She is destroying Germany.”

Front Row At the White House

The Book of the Week is “Front Row At the White House, My Life and Times” by Helen Thomas, published in 1999. The cover of this volume hints at a career memoir, but the contents are mostly about other people and topics– namely, U.S. president-related information meant to entertain as much as inform, targeted at female readers.

Born in 1920, Thomas grew up in Detroit in a family of nine children. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English, she hired on at United Press, a news wire service, assisting with radio broadcasts. When men went off to fight WWII, opportunities became available for women in journalism.

However, in the 1950’s, female journalists were forced to form their own press club; for, until 1971, they were banned from the National Press Club. Thomas was president of the women’s group for the 1959-1960 term. In 1975, she was the first woman to be admitted to the Gridiron Club. It is known mostly for having an annual dinner that roasts elective officeholders.

At the very end of 1960, the author was assigned to cover the White House. She did this for 38 years. It appears that she gathered “soft” news until around the Reagan Era, when her male bosses allowed her to do what the men had been doing. Nevertheless, she built a reputation for herself as a hard-hitting reporter (figuratively).

Initially, Thomas interviewed store owners that sold goods and services to Jackie Kennedy, and wrote about Jackie’s children. Acquiring such information was more difficult than it looked, as Jackie actively hid herself and her children from the media. The tabloid gossip during Lyndon Johnson’s administration included Thomas’ scoop on his daughter’s engagement.

Thomas wasn’t allowed to cover serious political issues until the 1980’s. Yet, ironically, here in the double-digit 2000’s, “journalism” has come full circle. The media is allowed to cover whatever they want. Yet, increasingly, in recent decades, they have continued to insult viewers’, readers’ and listeners’ intelligence. There used to be people called journalists who reported facts. And they checked them.

Now there are people on TV reading Teleprompters, on the radio reading scripts, and providing screen-based text stating their opinions on: the first lady’s clothing, the president’s diet, and all manner of comments from narcissistic attention whores on Twitter. Other outlets are commenting on the fact that their competitors are covering this stupid trivia. Ad nauseam.

Anyway, the author rambled on about press secretaries of Kennedy onward. She described the renovations done to the White House and Air Force One, and the food served in them. She also provided a detailed account of a Washington, D.C. busybody who got involved with the Watergate scandal.

Martha Mitchell (the wife of President Richard Nixon’s campaign manager and Justice Department head, John Mitchell) complained that Nixon wanted her husband to take the rap for the coverup. She also knew Nixon was evil and said– this was about a year and a half before it actually happened– the president should resign. In August 1974, finally vindicated, she went on the talk-show circuit.

Thomas delved into the personal lives of the first ladies, and how they stood by their men. She showed how President Ronald Reagan’s best friends were plausible denial and willful ignorance.

Read the book to learn much more about trivial White House goings-on from JFK to Bill Clinton, but also– a summary of hard political and historical facts on each president’s administration. Perhaps the latter should have become a separate book– as it could be a valuable resource for a unit on American presidents for a high school social studies class.

Not Pretty Enough

The Book of the Week is “Not Pretty Enough, The Unlikely Triumph of Helen Gurley Brown” by Gerri Hirshey, published in 2016.

Born in Arkansas in February 1922, Helen Gurley was ten years old when her father, a government worker and lawyer, passed away unexpectedly in a bizarre elevator accident. Perhaps as a result, she became quite close with her mother and sister throughout their lives, communicating via letters and phone calls when she was no longer living with them.

As was typical for women of her generation, Gurley was conditioned to become a secretary. However, she was sexually sophisticated. The 1960’s office culture could be described thusly: Married male executives exuded sociopathic tendencies and arrogance (not unlike those of today), and harbored the belief that it is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. In that era, engaging in sexual conquests with female subordinates was a way for males to prove their manhood. It is still is, but times are a-changin’. Gurley encouraged her female contemporaries to enjoy themselves.

Gurley played the game with the men to the hilt. She claimed she enjoyed sex and wrote about it extensively in articles and books. In 1959, she married David Brown, a high-level writer and editor.

Thereafter, like the men, she had affairs. She saw nothing wrong with marital infidelity. Besides, she claimed she had a great marriage. The problem is, infidelity smacks of dissatisfaction with marital sex– a spouse is dishonestly seeking satisfaction elsewhere; moreover, it is unclear if the wayward spouse is untrustworthy in other matters. Unless both spouses consent to an “open” marriage– either side can have other sexual partners– marriage is supposed to represent total lifelong commitment.

Anyway, Gurley’s passion and work ethic led her to achieve the positions of advertising copywriter in the 1950’s, and editor in chief of the then-financially struggling Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1960’s. At that time, the Hearst publication’s target readers were single women, between twenty and thirty-four years old.

Notwithstanding the kind of fabulous career that few women achieved in those days, two points must be made: 1) Gurley advanced her career through illicit sex and marrying a powerful man in her field of work; and 2) she was still a slave to the societal pressures of her generation– she had excessive cosmetic surgery and an eating disorder in order to satisfy public expectations of female beauty.

Read the book to learn of the additional factors affecting Gurley’s successes, and of how she influenced a whole generation of women.

Madame President

The Book of the Week is “Madame President, The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf” by Helene Cooper, published in 2017.

In post-Civil War America, (White) slave owners who had secretly fathered offspring were afraid of further racial strife, so they sent manumitted slaves to Liberia. By the late 1860’s, there were 28 different ethnic groups living there.

Ellen Johnson was born in October 1938 in the country’s capital, Monrovia– ironically, a place that discriminates against dark-skinned people. Her mother was unusually lucky. Her mother’s poverty-stricken parents handed her off to foster care, where her fair skin was received favorably throughout her childhood. Johnson got her mother’s color. Her family predicted she would have a lucky life– a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even so, Johnson had to endure the difficulties females faced in her culture. These included: an arranged marriage (that allowed polygamy for the husband), the expectation that she would bear children; physical abuse, and sex imposed by males against the wills of females of all ages.

Fortunately, Johnson bore four sons and her husband was an attorney. He and she had valuable social connections that allowed them the chance to study in the United States. Childcare was handled by extended relatives.

When Johnson-Sirleaf was thirty years old, she had had enough of the barbaric practices heaped upon Liberian people of her gender. She obtained a divorce. Right up until the courtroom hearing finalizing the split, she was phobic that her ex would retaliate yet again with even worse domestic violence than before. Divorcing was a radical step for a Liberian female. But she was exceptional; in her life, every special advantage she got led to another. Yet, most of her later achievements were done on her own merits– not as a result of marriage to a powerful man.

The Liberian government had one political party, the True Whig Party, whose members used the government as their personal piggy bank. By the early 1970’s, there was a very wide income/asset gap between the government officials and military thugs, and the unfortunate Liberian citizens; there was no middle class. The nation had been drained of its major resources, rubber and iron, which had been exported to foreign countries by profiteers.

Johnson was academically skilled and played well with others politically. She got a job with the Liberian Debt Service Department at Treasury, and then the Ministry of Finance while radical changes were afoot. She studied accounting, and later, public administration at Harvard. However, her public speech could be inflammatory, because she told the truth. She called the system a “kleptocracy– corrupt to the core.” At a later time, she warned that a peasant revolt was in the offing.

In 1971, the new nepotistic “president” of the country was switching benefactors, from the United States to the U.S.S.R. Allegedly, he was going to help the downtrodden and eliminate corruption. Yet he practiced cronyism on a royal scale and angered the civilian Liberian people in numerous other ways.

Read the book to learn how the tide turned eventually through the ugly events that transpired; how, more than once, Johnson was very nearly killed but instead encountered a checkered fate; and how the United States played a major part in her and Liberia’s survival, despite having blood on its hands.

Talking Back

The Book of the Week is “Talking Back” by Andrea Mitchell, published in 2005. This is the career memoir of a TV journalist at NBC.

Mitchell started her career in the mid-1960’s covering local politics in Philadelphia. Her desire to cover national politics necessitated a move to Washington, D.C. Through the decades, she witnessed and reported on various presidential campaigns and administrations– good, bad and ugly. She traveled the world extensively, and conveyed lessons on history and politics that the nation’s leaders failed to learn.

“In administrations that lack discipline, or are led by chiefs of staff short on character or judgment… underlings desperate to please the boss [president] start breaking rules.”

There were ironies, too. During the Iran-Contra scandal, the Iranians didn’t know they were paying for an anti-Communist operation whose money was laundered through Israel– a sworn enemy of Iran.

The author’s career had its ups and downs. In the late 1980’s, she was assigned to cover Capitol Hill rather than serve as Chief White House Correspondent. The former position conferred lesser status. However, she had more freedom of movement and topics on which to report, due to her distance from the president– who required an entourage and heavy security. She could pursue important stories on foreign policy, the budget, or energy legislation, rather than public relations events and sensationalism. In 1993, she was named to the latter position, but could no longer be a political analyst on the Today show, as at that time, it was considered a conflict of interest to have the same person both report and analyze political news.

Mitchell covered the Savings and Loan scandal, a common occurrence in American financial history. A pattern of abuse in the private sector, aided and abetted by government, was followed by a taxpayer bailout.

Prior to the First Gulf War, “Dick Cheney and Colin Powell told us that occupying Iraq would saddle America with the burden of running it.” It was difficult enough for people from the three major sects of Islam to live together peacefully in the same country without a foreign power’s attempting to supervise a transition to a different political system.

Controversy over gender and racial issues came to the fore after the Anita Hill – Clarence Thomas episode. The catch-22 for females trying to build their careers, especially in male-dominated fields (such as TV news) was that if they complained of sexual harassment, they’d be complaining to its very perpetrators. The times, they are a changin’.

In 1992, Mitchell, in reporting on Bill Clinton’s presidential run, pursued an unending series of campaign scandals. Two years later, she was present at a press conference at which Hillary Clinton was responding to Whitewater accusations. “It was a flawless performance, but the first lady still would not admit to any errors of law or judgment in her financial dealings. And behind her calm gaze, I saw a woman still enraged that people would even question her ethics.”

In the mid-90’s, the author was required to have two reputable news sources before she was allowed to go on the air with a big news scoop. Read the book to learn of other ways “news” gathering and reporting have changed through the decades, and Mitchell’s experiences dealing with the changes.

Reporting Live

The Book of the Week is “Reporting Live” by Lesley Stahl, published in 1999. This career memoir tells how the author clawed her way to the top of the TV news ladder (especially political news) as a female who eventually started a family, beginning in the early 1970’s, when “… the television networks were scouring the country for women and blacks with any news experience at all” to comply with affirmative action initiatives.

In her early 30’s, the author had a couple of years under her belt when she started gathering stories for CBS radio news. Television news people considered themselves superior to those in radio. Stahl worked as a reporter around the clock to prove her worth to everyone around her.

Covering the Watergate scandal was a particularly trying endeavor for all news organizations. The author was assigned, at dawn, to stake out the homes of the accused in order to stick a microphone in their faces and shout questions at them in front of the camera, and attend press conferences. Nixon was reelected despite his treachery, because when the economy is on an even keel, voters are hesitant to change horses in midstream, even when there are rumors of wrongdoing, according to Stahl.

During the 1976 presidential campaign, the author’s crew used new-fangled cameras that weighed 12 lbs, whose batteries weighed 20 lbs and were supposed to last an hour but never did. There was separate unreliable equipment imported from Japan for the soundmen, that weighed 50-60 lbs.

Stahl had no guilt about working her normal (extremely long) hours during her pregnancy and afterwards, due to her mother’s commanding reassurance that her career should come first. In early 1979, when she was named White House correspondent, her bosses asked her whether she was comfortable being away from her infant daughter, given the demands of her job. They would never have asked that of a man.

Reagan decreased taxes for the wealthy and imposed severe budget cuts in social programs. He appointed an anti-environmentalist to run the EPA. He pushed the national debt to an all-time high and significantly increased military spending. His speeches often contradicted what he was actually doing. Nonetheless, his image as Mr. Charisma endeared people to him on a personal level. The charm of the messenger made people blind to the message. They ignored his numerous actions that seriously damaged the country in many ways during his administration. One of the first problems he caused was a deep recession in 1982. His poll numbers sank, so of course his staff: quarreled, tried to plug the leaks, and bashed the media.

When Stahl’s daughter was four, she and her husband had to undergo a laborious preschool application process. “This was far more of a strain than deadlines or prime time news conferences.”

In the early 1980’s, Stahl’s producer had to do extensive planning when her reporting required her to follow the travels of the president for a couple of days from rural Iowa to Des Moines. The producer had to order rotary-dial phones for every stop, large hotel rooms in which to edit video, motorcycle carriers in which to run video, a microwave transmission facility, and a helicopter to fly the video to Des Moines. These resources were pooled with the other networks. Anyway, the White House deliberately pulled the plug on the audio of the reporters during the president’s speech.

In 1983, CBS changed the look of its evening news slot to show one star: Dan Rather. The other networks followed suit. “Now there were three young, handsome men at the three helms… and I [Stahl] was about to turn 42, the age past which newswomen weren’t supposed to survive on television.”

Read the book to learn what transpired when Lawrence Tisch took over CBS, how the “news” changed in terms of content, how Stahl topped off her career, and much more.

That Was the Life

The Book of the Week is “That Was the Life” by Dora Jane Hamblin, published in 1977. The original Life magazine was launched in November 1936. The weekly publication let photos tell news stories, with brief captions.

Caption-writing was laborious, fraught with “cooks”– at least ten of them, spoiling the broth at a layout session. Making headlines fit was a big challenge.

Most Life photographers had unlimited expense accounts (and spared no expense on transportation, food and equipment), were arrogant, and chased after what today would be considered non-stories. They got local authorities to turn outdoor public areas into photo studios using generators, stroboscopic lights, klieg lights, electric wires, a crane, etc., transported by flatbed truck. They sometimes made tens of people wait for hours in difficult poses while preparing all that. “Writers and editors, faced with the need to make even the most banal occurrence seem important, reached always for superlatives or piquant details and, if they couldn’t find them…” would stretch the truth. They thought their jobs were the most important in the world. They had such an inflated sense of self.

Photos were published in the magazine as is, with no doctoring, through the 1950’s, however. There was even a “Chinese firewall” between the editorial and the ad departments, to prevent the appearance of favorable reportorial coverage of advertisers. Bureau chiefs would compete by sending reporters to chase an international story with wasteful redundancy.

When there were big stories to cover, Life covered them. In summer 1958, the magazine threw a budget-busting party to get a scoop on the U.S. Navy’s current underwater war toys. Sailors and the females hired to keep them company, had a grand old time enjoying rich food, alcohol and dancing. The following day, hung over staffers’ typewriters were clicking with the story. In early 1965, Life had more than thirty people fly eight hours to London to cover Winston Churchill’s funeral.

Part of the 1950’s gravy train included an independent study program for lucky employees, who were paid over years to basically write a PhD dissertation, parts of which became magazine articles. Reporters traveled, at times, to places like Marrakech, Baghdad and the Nile Valley, and withstood harsh conditions, such as camping out in a snow-bound military post heated by a wood-burning stove, where wolves were present. Other reporters tested culinary recipes or sampled restaurant food for weeks on the company’s dime.

By 1956, there were three versions of the magazine: in America and Canada, in Spanish for Latin America, and Life International. At its peak, eight million copies of the first version and almost a million of the third version were sold per week. Life‘s United States competition included Look magazine, the Saturday Evening Post and Colliers. In Europe, subscribers could purchase Paris Match in France, Europeo in Italy, the Daily Express in London, and Quick, or Der Stern in Germany, instead of Life.

Life employees worked around the clock with deadline pressure for all, and frequent travel for some, so their social lives were usually spent with their colleagues; many celebrations were hosted and paid for by their workplace. Office supplies were provided for staffers’ personal use, and they got a library, post-office and medical services in-house.

Read the book to learn of other characteristics of that bygone era of magazine publishing.