The author, an ex-correspondent for NBC News, describes his career as a reporter, and points out the limitations and shortcomings of broadcast news

Broadcast Blues: Dispatches from the Twenty-Year War Between a Television Reporter and His Medium

Burns, Eric

Biographies & Memoirs

Harpercollins

All the News Unfit to Print: How Things Were... and How They Were Reported

You really can't believe everything you read . . .A premature newswire report announces the end of World War I, spurring wild celebrations in American streets days before the actual treaty was signed. A St. Louis newspaper prints reviews of theatrical performances that never took place—they had been canceled due to bad weather. New York newspaper reporters plant evidence in the apartment of the man accused of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby and then call him a liar in the courtroom once the trial begins.
These are just a few of the many wrongs that have been reported as right over two centuries of American history. All the News Unfit to Print puts the media under the microscope to expose the many types of mistakes, hoaxes, omissions, and lies that have skewed our understanding of the past, and reveals the range of reasons and motivations—from boredom and haste to politics and greed-behind them. Reviewing a host of journalistic slip-ups involving Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, William Randolph Hearst, Theodore H. White, and many others, this book covers the stories behind the stories to refine incorrect ""first drafts"" of history from the Revolutionary War era to more recent times.
""All the News Unfit to Print is a rollicking joyride that careens through the ridiculous, the odd, and the serious malfeasances in American journalistic history and reminds us of the difference between news and facts."" —Neal Gabler, author of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

History

Americas

Trade Paper Press

Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism

Professionals & Academics

Public Affairs

Describes how 1920 was filled with massive political and social upheaval behind the flash and frivolity the decade has become known for, arguing that the twelve-month period foreshadowed the events of the twentieth and early twenty-first century.

1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar (Thorndike Press Large Print Popular and Narrative Nonfiction)

Thorndike Press

More than a century has passed since Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, but he still continues to fascinate. Never has a more exuberant man been our nation's leader. He became a war hero, reformed the NYPD, busted the largest railroad and oil trusts, passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, created national parks and forests, won the Nobel Peace Prize, and built the Panama Canal to name just a few.
Yet it was the cause he championed the hardest America's entry in to WWI that would ultimately divide and destroy him. His youngest son, Quentin, his favorite, would die in an air fight. How does looking at Theodore's relationship with his son, and understanding him as a father, tell us something new about this larger-than-life-man? Does it reveal a more human side? A more hypocritical side? Or simply, if tragically, a nature so surprisingly sensitive, despite the bluster, that he would die of a broken heart?
Roosevelt's own history of boyhood illnesses made him so aware of was like to be a child in pain, that he could not bear the thought of his own children suffering. The Roosevelts were a family of pillow-fights, pranks, and "scary bear." And it was the baby, Quentin the frailest who worried his father the most. Yet in the end, it was he who would display, in his brief life, the most intellect and courage of all."

The Golden Lad: The Haunting Story of Quentin and Theodore Roosevelt (Thorndike Biography)

Leaders & Notable People

Thorndike Press Large Print

"Eric Burns, a bona fide TV historian … has brought our early, grainy television history to life in living color. His book is a tour of our times, from cowboys and Indians, and scoundrels and healers, to televised hearings and game show hosts. Invasion of the Mind Snatchers is a television-lover's portrait of how we got here, for better or worse, and Burns reminds us that what we were watching all those years was our own history unfolding." —Brian Williams, Anchor and Managing Editor, NBC Nightly News

Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television's Conquest of America in the Fifties

Humor & Entertainment

Television

Temple University Press

Jane Taylor is independent and happy raising her daughter, Britt any, as a single mother. With a fulfilling and lucrative job, she and Brittany have a good life together. But it's all cut short when Jane is attacked and murdered by an unknown, masked assailant. The same man also goes after fourteen year-old Brittany, who barely manages to escape his clutches. Five years later, she is still struggling to cope with the loss. Now a sophomore in college, Brittany is getting ready for a celebratory spring break vacation when a mysterious phone call from an old neighbor halts her plans. It sounds as though someone in her hometown has information about her mother's murder, and Brittany can't help but go back to her hometown to see if she can discover the truth. Word spreads fast that Brittany is back in town, and the killer soon hears of her return. He knows she is trying to solve her mother's murder, and he will stop at nothing to keep his identity secret-even if it means killing again.

The Tragedy of Brittany Taylor

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

iUniverse

One of the most dynamic eras in American history, the 1920s began with a watershed year that would set the tone for the century to follow.The Roaring Twenties is the only decade in American history with a widely applied nickname, and our collective fascination with this era continues. But how did this surge of innovation and cultural milestones emerge out of the ashes of World War I?Acclaimed author Eric Burns investigates the year 1920, which was not only a crucial twelve-month period of its own, but one that foretold the future. 1920 foreshadowed the rest of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, whether it was Sacco and Vanzetti or the stock market crash that brought this era to a close.Burns sets the record straight about this most misunderstood and iconic of periods. Despite being the first full year of armistice, 1920 was not a peaceful period--it contained the greatest act of terrorism in American history to that time. And while 1920 is thought of as the beginning of a prosperous era, for most people life had never been more unaffordable. Meanwhile, African Americans were putting their stamp on culture. And though people today imagine the frivolous image of the flapper dancing the night away, the truth was that a new kind of power had been bestowed on women, and it had nothing to do with the dance floor.From prohibition to immigration, the birth of jazz, the rise of expatriate literature, and the original Ponzi scheme, 1920 was truly a year like no other.

1920 Lib/E: The Year That Made the Decade Roar

Blackstone Publishing

The Roaring Twenties is the only decade in American history with a widely applied nickname, and our fascination with this era continues.Despite being the first full year of armistice, 1920 was not a peaceful period. And while 1920 is thought of as the beginning of a prosperous era, for most people life had never been more unaffordable. Meanwhile, African Americans were putting their stamp on culture. And though people today imagine the frivolous image of the flapper dancing the night away, the truth was that a new kind of power had been bestowed on women. From prohibition to immigration and the rise of expatriate literature, 1920 was truly a year like no other.

1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar

Blackstone Audiobooks

In 1957, America turned its back on its earlier self and jumped headlong into the nation it has become today. From Sputnik and the beginning of the space race to Little Richard and the underappreciated influence of rock n' roll in bringing blacks and whites closer together, to President Eisenhower's Interstate Highway Act, which forever changed the landscape, 1957 represents the year when all of the energy and anxiety that had followed the end of World War II exploded. In compelling stories from politics, pop culture, business, and the media, Eric Burns captures the excitement of a headspinning year and the lingering fallout that continues to resonate seven decades later. For baby boomers seeking to relive their formative years or readers seeking a window into midcentury America, 1957 provides a highly readable tour through one of the most fascinating years in American history.

1957: The Year That Launched the American Future

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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