This holiday season, there’s nothing better you can give your favorite overworked journalist than a good book, with a note attached exhorting him or her to get off the screen and curl up on the couch instead.
Last year’s winter reading list from our readers included classics like Upton Sinclair’s The Brass Check, and newer selections, like The Lonely Soldier by Helen Benedict and Hella Nation by Evan Wright. This past summer, Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists—a darkly comic novel tracing tracing a fictional English-language newspaper in Rome through its slow decline—topped the list as most recommended by our commenters.
So what do you suggest this time around? Feel free to recommend more than one great read: fiction, nonfiction, history, memoir—we’re all ears.
If you're looking for a little inspiration during the sunless months, I recommend both The Writing Life and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.
#1 Posted by Lauren Kirchner, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 11:10 AM
i HIGHLY recommend Stick It Up Your Punter!: The Uncut Story of the "Sun" Newspaper. it's a rollicking-but-depressing tale of Murdoch's takeover of the Sun and the insanely irresponsible antics of editorial Little Englander Kelvin MacKenzie.
#2 Posted by steev, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 11:25 AM
Falling off the edge by Alex Perry - reporting form Iraq, Afghanistan, China this is TIME's African Editor at his best and telling us what he saw while he was picking up stories.
The Winter House by NIcci Gerrard - fictional escapism into the wolrd of human relationships (not journo related but am a journo who's loving it at the mo).
Newspeak in the 21st Century by David Edwards and David Cromwell - awesome look at media reality today - full frontal attack on the BBC and others by the duo that began my favourite subsription Media List network.
#3 Posted by Alia Papageorgiou, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 11:31 AM
Michael Frayn's 'Towards the End of the Morning'. Scoop, the sequel. Hilarious and often horribly true.
#4 Posted by Ed Cumming, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 11:51 AM
"Punter" is a good call. Entertaining stuff indeed. In a similar vein, Matthew Engel's "Tickle The Public" is a great historical perspective on the newspaper industry, eloquently written.
Of the many "new media" books recently, the best I've read is "Say Everything" by Scott Rosenberg, about the explosion in blogging.
#5 Posted by Steve McGookin, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 12:01 PM
"Punter" is a good call. Entertaining stuff indeed. In a similar vein, Matthew Engel's "Tickle The Public" is a great historical perspective on the newspaper industry, eloquently written.
Of the many "new media" books recently, the best I've read is "Say Everything" by Scott Rosenberg, about the explosion in blogging.
#6 Posted by Steve McGookin, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 12:02 PM
I just read the Kingdom and the Power, Gay Talese's history of the New York Times. It's a throwback, but packed with incredible prose and fascinating stories of the journalists of the early- and mid-20th century.
#7 Posted by Joe O, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 12:02 PM
Augustus, by John Williams. An epistolary telling of the rise of Caesar Augustus, written in precise, gorgeous prose, Augustus is a profound reflection on the nature and burdens of political power. As good as I, Claudius and better than all the other novels of Rome. Won the National Book Award in the seventies. Read Alan Prendergast's recent Westword feature on Williams for more about this unjustly forgotten author.
#8 Posted by Justin Peters, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 12:12 PM
I just finished 'The Deeds of My Fathers,' about 2 important newspaper publishers, Generoso Pope and Gene Pope.
A hell of a story, both ways, but I recommend the book only to the intiated, because it boots Generoso Pope's shilling for the Fascists; and does not mention the Weekly World News.
Written by Paul Pope, son of Gene.
#9 Posted by Harry Eagar, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 02:28 PM
"Touch and Go", by Studs Terkel. It's the memoir of a remarkably lucid 95 year old, written just three or four years before his death in 2008. Terkel spent much of his professional life in various modes of 'reporting'...oral history, radio drama, writing, broadcasting, listening, and befriending. He was witness to many of the progressive movements of the 20th century and sympathetic to them and to those who told the truth about them.
#10 Posted by John Emery, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 02:59 PM
"Touch and Go", by Studs Terkel. It's the memoir of a remarkably lucid 95 year old, written just three or four years before his death in 2008. Terkel spent much of his professional life in various modes of 'reporting'...oral history, radio drama, writing, broadcasting, listening, and befriending. He was witness to many of the progressive movements of the 20th century and sympathetic to them and to those who told the truth about them.
#11 Posted by John Emery, CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 03:00 PM
If the aim is to encourage journalists to be more knowledgeable, more independent of thought and more skeptical of those in power, then here are some great places to start:
LAW
-- The U.S. Constitution
-- The Law, by Frederic Bastiat
Synopsis and free e-book: mises.org/resources/2731/The-Law
-- A Nation of Sheep, by Andrew Napolitano
See: mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=343
ECONOMICS
-- Anything by Henry Hazlitt, esp. Economics in One Lesson.
Here is a good list, including free e-books: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hazlitt#Books
HISTORY
-- Great Wars and Great Leaders, by Ralph Raico
Synopsis and free e-book: mises.org/resources/6046/Great-Wars-and-Great-Leaders-A-Libertarian-Rebuttal
On the other hand, if the aim is to make journalists more patriotic (i.e., delusional to the point of blindly supporting govt and its social and political wars), then read anything that is lauded by the NYT or Oprah.
#12 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 14 Dec 2010 at 05:18 PM
The brand new book "BLUR -- How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload" is the perfect gift for anyone who cares about the news. It's a fascinating review of the new kinds of content we're all faced with in today's blurry mashup of news, ads and commentary. Well-respected journalists Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel tell us how to be active skeptics. BLUR makes the case that journalistic skills are more important than ever and that News Literacy should be widely taught in the schools. Despite my training as a journalist and an attorney, I found the critical thinking skills in "BLUR" have made me a smarter, more proactive media consumer.
#13 Posted by Linda Shoemaker, CJR on Wed 15 Dec 2010 at 11:10 AM
This is an offbeat suggestion. E.L. Doctorow's "Waterworks" isn't a novel about journalism per se, but the main character is a newspaper editor. Set in Boss Tweed's New York City, the novel tells the story of a young freelance reviewer who blunders into an evil plot organized by some pretty nefarious characters. When the freelancer disappears, his editor goes to look for him, using the only techniques available to him: those of an investigative reporter operating before telephones were invented. You thought reporting before the Internet was difficult! My memory is a bit hazy, but I remember reading this novel as a young reporter and trying to imagine how I would have operated when my only access to sources were my own feet, knowledge of which local bars had the most loquacious patrons and a keen memory for street addresses.
#14 Posted by Jill Drew, CJR on Wed 15 Dec 2010 at 12:19 PM
I think just about everyone could use a laugh these days and the best place to get it can be had in "MAD's Greatest Artists: The Completely MAD Don Martin." Here is your chance to read about Festerbestertester and his partner, Karbunkle, and of course the immortal Captain Klutz. This book, unlike the magazine in which the work originally appeared, ain't cheap. In fact, the manufacturer's suggested retail price is $95, though of course it can be had for less on the Internets. But as Herbert Hoover's treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, once said in a rather different context (he buying a Jan van Eyck painting from the Soviets, I think), if you are paying a stiff price for a priceless object, you are getting it cheap. Think about that, folks.
#15 Posted by Aaron Elstein, CJR on Fri 17 Dec 2010 at 11:31 AM
Correction: The Don Martin collection's sticker price is $150 and the correct spelling of the unshaven, bad-breathed, surly-mooded character is Fester Bestertester (sometimes known as Fonebone). The errors are regretted.
#16 Posted by Aaron, CJR on Fri 17 Dec 2010 at 01:42 PM
"AMERICAN RADICAL: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF I.F STONE" by D.D. Guttenplan (Farrar Straus Giroux) is a superbly researched and written bio of the man who, on his death in 1989, was hailed on ABC by Peter Jennings as "a journalist's journa,list" and on the front pages of the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times (which called him "the conscience of investigative journalisms" and the Philadelphia Inquirer (which saud that, "Like doubleheaders and the five cent cigar, I.F. Stone was an American institution." But just three and a half decades earlier, no daily newspaper dared to run Izzy Stone's byline. Discover the REAL I.F. Stone in Guttenplan's must-read biography.
#17 Posted by Doug Ireland, CJR on Fri 17 Dec 2010 at 02:28 PM
THE INFORMERS by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
ZONE by Mathias Énard
#18 Posted by Calvin Snyder, CJR on Fri 17 Dec 2010 at 03:04 PM
Read everything by John Brooks And "Adam Smith" AKA George Goodman; read nothing by Joseph Nocera and Charles Gasparino.
#19 Posted by Mike Robbins, CJR on Fri 17 Dec 2010 at 03:16 PM
Unbelievably, considering my long interest in good American journalism, I hadn't, until my most recent library visit, read Myra MacPherson's I.F. Stone biography, "All Governments Lie:...", another good book about the man with whom all journalists need acquaintance.
#20 Posted by Richard Schnibbe, CJR on Fri 17 Dec 2010 at 04:40 PM
I strongly recommend "The Warmth of Other Suns", by Isabel Wilkerson. It's amazing!
#21 Posted by Carolina, CJR on Mon 20 Dec 2010 at 01:20 PM
"Family of Secrets", by Russ Baker, amazing recent history of, but not limited to, the Bush family.
#22 Posted by Alice de Tocqueville, CJR on Tue 21 Dec 2010 at 10:30 AM
Day by Day Armageddon by JL Bourne and its sequel, Arguing With Idiots, by Glenn Beck, and The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for The Third World by Christopher Andrew.
#23 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Tue 21 Dec 2010 at 10:49 AM
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum.
"Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks" by Ben Goldacre.
#24 Posted by Curtis Brainard, CJR on Wed 22 Dec 2010 at 12:17 PM
Guessing that many of you care about the future of journalism, the best book I've come across is The Death and Life of American Journalism by McChesney and Nichols. It's a fast and fascinating read.
#25 Posted by John McManus, CJR on Wed 22 Dec 2010 at 05:47 PM
There is no one better at narrative and reporting than Robert A. Caro. You could start with the Robert Moses door-stopper, but I'd recommend vol. 1 of his LBJ books: The Path to Power. See, for example, the chapter titled "The Sad Irons," about life in the Texas Hill Country before LBJ helped bring electricity. If there is a better piece of narrative nonfiction this side of "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," I'd love to know about it.
#26 Posted by Carrie R., CJR on Mon 27 Dec 2010 at 09:11 AM
Little Bunch of Madmen: Elements of Global Reporting, by Mort Rosenblum. Outstanding.
#27 Posted by Justin D. Martin, CJR on Wed 29 Dec 2010 at 03:39 PM
It's forty years in June since the publication of the Pentagon Papers, so I'm reading "The Papers & The Papers," Sandford Ungar's excellent account, which is still riveting in 2011.
#28 Posted by Mike Hoyt, CJR on Tue 4 Jan 2011 at 01:44 PM