Nonfiction – Page 56 – education and deconstruction.com

My Wild World

The Book of the Week is “My Wild World” by Joan Embery With Denise Demong, published in 1980. This is the career memoir of an animal lover and trainer.

The San Diego Zoo was founded in 1916. In the late 1960’s, the author went to work for the Children’s Zoo there. An entry-level position normally involves lots of dirty work.

By early 1970, Embery was a public relations representative for the zoo. She went on numerous TV shows such as “What’s My Line” and “The Steve Allen Show” to promote the animals. One of her signature feats was training Carol the elephant to paint by holding a brush with her trunk.

Training animals is challenging and entertaining, but can also be a frustrating, dangerous business. Lots of behind-the-scenes work goes into simply displaying animals at a zoo; never mind animal shows. Many specialists are involved, including a lawyer (in the United States, of course), veterinarians, pathologists and behaviorists.

In 1969, the San Diego Zoo began to build the Wild Animal Park, a monorail ride for visitors that shows wild animals in their natural habitat. A major issue always associated with animals is finding sufficient space for housing them. The Siberian tiger can weigh as much as 800 lbs, and an elephant gains about 60 lbs a month when it is maturing. Various birth control methods are employed to minimize overbreeding.

In the early 1980’s, a computer database was initiated to the facilitate the exchange of animals among zoological establishments, to foster the reproduction of endangered animals.

Read the book to learn of the author’s experiences working and performing with, and serving as owner of, exotic animals such as pachyderms, reptiles, marsupials, predatory cats, and more.

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.

Up Late With Joe Franklin

The Book of the Week is “Up Late With Joe Franklin” by Joe Franklin with R.J. Marx, published in 1995. This is the career memoir of an entertainment jockey.

Franklin started his career in radio, playing old records. He was a compulsive hoarder of them. When he moved to television, he introduced old movies. Then he became a late, late night talk show host. Although Franklin had popular shows that ran for years and years, fewer people have heard of him than of other talk show hosts because his shows ran at 1am or later.

Read the book to learn how Franklin achieved his entertainment success, and a little trivia about tens (out of hundreds) of the celebrity-guests Franklin had on his shows, which ones he interviewed before they were famous, and the ones he claims he made famous.

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.

Case Files

The Book of the Week is “Case Files, 40 Murders and Mysteries Solved by Science” by Larry Verstraete, published in 2011. This book briefly describes how science played a role in the investigations of various situations, such as homicides, discoveries of human remains, the root cause of an epidemic, astronaut deaths, art forgery, arson and many others.

The topic areas included forensic entomology, archeological anthropology, pathology, DNA fingerprinting, radiocarbon dating, video superimposition, spectroscopy, stable isotope technology, Raman microscopy, xylotomy and others.

When a dead body is found, and certain insects are present, a scientist can learn how many generations and lifespans of that insect elapsed from the time of death until the corpse’s discovery.

The gender, age and size of a murder victim can be discerned, even when the body is badly decomposed, from the bones. The nature of the teeth indicate age, and ethnicity is revealed by the skull’s features. DNA testing of various kinds is a whole other ball of wax.

Read the book to get an overview of the many ways science can provide evidence for reconstructing events to further the causes of justice, improve people’s quality of life and prevent future mishaps.

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.

Diary of a West Point Cadet

The Book of the Week is “Diary of a West Point Cadet” by Captain Preston Pysh, published in 2011. This slim volume tells of a West Point student’s experiences as a member of the Class of 2003.

Pysh (rhymes with “fish”) was originally from a small farm town in Pennsylvania. He was a growth-oriented, goal-oriented individual who survived the military-style draconian training meted out at the academy because he understood the lessons behind the rigor. The place had a demanding, exacting atmosphere– forcing the students to find creative solutions to problems in serving the upperclassmen. Only about one tenth of the students majored in electrical, mechanical or civil engineering. The author was passionate about aerospace engineering. The highlight of his college career was his senior project– an experimental device for NASA that he and his project-group members tested in a KC-135 aircraft.

Read the book to learn more about Pysh’s trials, tribulations and triumphs in navigating the high pressure, military-career oriented institution that is West Point.

Side Note: This book appears to have been written: a) with the aid of speech-recognition software (which has yet to be perfected) or b) simply never edited after the first draft, as it contained an annoying number of misspellings, skipped words and grammatical errors.

A Good Life

The Book of the Week is “A Good Life, Newspapering and Other Adventures” by Ben Bradlee, published in 1995.

The author was a descendant of a prominent Boston Brahmin family. Unsurprisingly, his older brother and he both graduated from Harvard; never mind their grades. Then, in the middle of WWII, he was stationed on a Navy destroyer in the Pacific.

After surviving the war, Bradlee and the first of his three wives moved to New Hampshire. He was an integral part of a small, regional Sunday-only newspaper until its demise. Subsequent to that, the Washington Post hired him the first of two times at the tail end of 1948.

Bradlee was at Newsweek when John Kennedy was elected president. Kennedy got along with the press famously, like an old, dear friend. In August 1965, Bradleee became managing editor of the Washington Post. “The newsroom was racist… the mind-set of the Post made the editors ask how much an assignment cost, instead of how much the paper needed the story.” Case in point: The Post was (inexcusably) nearly a week late in reporting on the Watts riots.

Newspapermen at that time had five deadlines a day– in determining which stories would be printed in the morning and evening editions, which story would be on page one, etc. Needless to say, Bradlee’s never-ending work meant he never saw his family. Especially after the Washington Post continued publishing installments of the Pentagon Papers in the summer of 1971, after the New York Times was legally banned from doing so. Not that the Post wasn’t banned, but it was willing to go to the mat for the principle of a free press.

Political turmoil was next on the agenda, with the Watergate break-in, on which the inimitable pair Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did a thorough investigation and engaged in bold, ongoing disclosure. Bradlee wrote, “The denials exploded all around us all day like incoming artillery shells.” Bob Dole accused the Democrat, liberal-leaning Post of knowingly helping George McGovern’s campaign by alleging that Nixon committed crimes as part of his reelection campaign. The president was a bit resentful of the intrusion on his activities. Just a bit. Bradlee thought it likely that personally and professionally, his own phones were being tapped and he would be subjected to a rigorous IRS audit.

In May 1973, not to be outdone in pettiness, vengefulness and meanness of spirit, Nixon insinuated to the author and others that their lives were in the balance for turning the screws on him. “All of these lies were on-the-record lies, before television cameras, before reporters, on the telephone, before large audiences, in a generation of Washington reporters generally considered by every generation of editors to be the finest reporters in the land.” People complained that the Post would never have investigated JFK the same way it did Nixon, because the liberal media always went after Republicans only, never Democrats. In recent decades, that changed, but the lying has increased, too.

Read the book to learn more about Bradlee’s families, of a dishonest Post employee, and other challenges the author faced. In sum, “…there is really no protection against a skillful liar, who has earned the trust of his or her editors. That is equally true of business, law, medicine, all professions.”

Partisans

The Book of the Week is “Partisans” by David Laskin, published in 2000. This book describes the soap-opera lives of a few of New York’s literati from the 1930’s into the 1970’s; specifically those associated with the left-wing publication “Partisan Review.” The relationships of the people described therein were like those of tabloid celebrities. They had alcohol-related physical fights, breakups and reconciliations with their multiple significant others. However, they considered themselves superior to others because they were literate.

This included promiscuous Vassar graduate Mary McCarthy, who, for a spell, shacked up with Philip Rahv, the journal’s editor. In early 1938, she left him to wed Edmund Wilson, more than a decade her senior. “Philip Rahv and Allen Tate… had a gift for spotting new talent… and sleeping with the discoveries when they were attractive females (sometimes the same females…)” In his lifetime, poet Robert Lowell had to deal with the traumas of mental illness and his parents’ deaths.

The women writers in those days, for whom it was customary to attach themselves to men, being female– were forced to confront the issues of “… power, money, work, prestige, sex, domestic labor, body image and freedom.”

Read the book to learn more about the lives and times, books, articles and poetry penned by other “New York intellectuals” too, such as Jean Stafford, Elizabeth Hardwick, Hannah Arendt, Caroline Gordon and Diana Trilling.

CNN, The Inside Story

The Book of the Week is “CNN, The Inside Story” by Hank Whittemore, published in 1990. This volume tells the history of CNN, Cable News Network. The point of CNN was to create an alternative to the then-three networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, that monopolized American TV.

In 1976, Ted Turner owned a company that provided cable TV via satellite, consisting of games of the professional sports teams owned by him, and movies. By the end of the 1970’s his goal was to start a 24-hour cable network of just news. He was like the American president Donald Trump in that “…Turner had set the goal and the deadline and the sense of mission; and now, as he always did, he was putting together the people who knew how to make it happen.” However, the entertainment industry in the United States is a completely different animal from the federal government.

Nevertheless, a headquarters– a previously decrepit structure, gutted and created from scratch– for the new cable channel in Atlanta, had been readied sufficiently to provide minimal functionality in six months. The secretary of Reese Schonfeld, a high executive in the venture, had this to say, “… they had sketched out the whole newsroom one night on the back of a grocery bag…”

Launched in mid-1980, CNN evolved into a “revolving door” station (viewers tuned in periodically to see whether there was breaking news; they didn’t watch it every second) because it had to do things on the cheap and fill 24 hours of airtime every 24 hours. The big three networks practiced cartelizing behavior in order to shut CNN out of information-sharing. So CNN sued all parties involved, not just the networks.

Read the book to learn of what became of CNN, up until the book’s writing.