When William Russell telegraphed his reports from the Crimean War to The Times of London in 1854, English readers learned what their soldiers were facing only moments, it seemed, after the barbarous events. This virtual simultaneity was new to journalism, and it was heady stuff. Russell described shocking circumstances that were being denied or played down in government debate about the conflict with Russia, so public attitudes were quickly affected. The two volumes of Russell’s dispatches published in 1856 only consolidated their importance.

Since that day, books by news reporters have usually been, unlike Russell’s, quite different from the regular dispatches on which they may be based and which they aim to surpass. They’re not exactly history, but they certainly contribute to our understanding of historic events—and they sometimes make news. How can that still be true? Russell’s reports had no competition, but today readers are inundated at all hours with breaking stories coming from every possible quarter. Yet amid this information glut, news books still matter, and we should appreciate why.

I don’t have the inside skinny on why newspaper editors permit, condone, or merely endure having their staff writers take off time to compose books, but I can attest to the reasons why we book publishers like it when they do. The reporters are often genuine experts on fascinating subjects; liberated from column inches, they add detail and color, improve and correct, expound more fully on the medium- and long-term implications of events; they also vent their own opinions, which in classical newspaper work should be rigorously omitted—and all of these are prerequisites for a good book. The best work usually comes from reporters who’ve planned a book all along—though sometimes they don’t decide to write one until the middle of a big story and then have...

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