What books (related to journalism) have impacted your life?
In early September, a journalist asked me this, and I named four of mine—
- Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: : The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (Alexievich’s ability to give voice to the voiceless is such I have to carry tissues whenever I read her books.)
- Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer (Malcolm’s book is the best I know on the complexities of journalists’ relation with sources (Hard to beat her opening!))
- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 (Thompson’s book on the 1972 election is crazy, raw, entertaining and thought-provoking, and a rougher version of what I suppose some would call literary non-fiction.)
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (This I think is still the single best analytical treatment of the role of journalism in (Western) society – a classic almost a century after it was published.)
I also asked people on Twitter for what books on journalism had impacted their lives, and got a lot of really interesting responses, I’m posting the first 100 recommendations I got below (sorry if I’ve missed some, it got very lively).
Just to be clear, I haven’t read all of these myself, and I don’t know whether I’d personally recommend them all, but it’s a great list and I hope others will find it inspiring – I’ve just finished Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff’s The Race Beat which was outstanding and I warmly recommend it (as Javier Moreno and others did to me), and have just started Jan Whitt’s Women in American Journalism.
The list is still very heavily male-dominated and overwhelmingly voices from the US and Europe, so very keen to see more suggestions for a broader range and more diverse voices. Can then update the list.
Non-fiction books including biographies, autobiographies, etc.
Zahra Hankir & Christiane Amanpour, Our Women On the Ground
Dahr Jamail, The End of Ice
Bernstein/Woodward, All the President’s Men
Alan Rusbridger, Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters
Joris Luyendijk, People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East
Hostwriter and CORRECTIV (publishers), Unbias the News: Why diversity matters for journalism
Jay Rosen, What Are Journalists For?
Katharine Graham, Personal History
Ed Snowden, Permanent Record
Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed
Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing
Jeff Jarvis, Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News
David Carr, The Night of the Gun
Jan Whitt, Women in American Journalism
Phillip Meyer, Paper Route: FINDING MY WAY TO PRECISION JOURNALISM
Jay Hamilton, Democracy’s Detectives
Michael Schudson, Discovering the News
Joan Didion, Political Fictions
James W. Carey, Communication as Culture
Timothy Crouse, The Boys on the Bus
David Halberstam, The Powers that Be
Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer
Ernest Hemingway, By-line
Chris Horrie, Stick it Up Your Punter: The Uncut Story of the Sun Newspaper
Paul Starr, Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications
Robert E. Park, The National History of The Newspaper
Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker
Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat
Ben Bradlee, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures
Jake Adelstein, Tokyo Vice
John Carey, The Faber Book of Reportage
George Packer, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
D Q McInerny, Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking
Ed Lambeth, Committed Journalism: An Ethic for the Profession
Vasily Grossman, A Writer at War: Vasily Gossman with the Red Army 1941-1945
George Orwell, Essays
John W. Dean, Blind Ambition: The White House Years
Fintan O’Toole, Back at the Ranch (The Politics of Irish Beef)
Alan Brinkley, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century
Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit
Bharat Anand, The Content Trap
Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
John Simpson, Despatches from the Barricades
A.J. Liebling, The Press
Tim Bowden, One Crowded Hour: Noel Davis, Combat Cameraman, 1934-85
Edward Behr, Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?
David Carr, The night of the gun
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
Andrew Marr, My Trade: A short history of British Journalism
Nicholas Coleridge, Paper Tigers: The latest, greatest newspaper tycoons and how the won the world
Harold Evans, Essential English and Pictures on a Page
Seymour Hersh, Reporter: A Memoir
Marvin Kalb, The Nixon Memo
Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Robert Boynton, The New New Journalism
Dave Cullen, Columbine
Max du Preez, Palle Native: Memories of a Renegade Reporter
Sebastian Junger, War
Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
Greg Marinovich, The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War
Hans Rosling, Factfulnesss: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think
Jon Swain, River of Time
Michael Herr, Dispatches
Antonio Rubio, El Origen del Gal: Guerra Sucia y Crimen de Estado
Marie Colvin, On the Front Line: the Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin
Maria Angelica Correa, A Ese Muchacho lo van a matar
John Pilger, Heroes
Oriana Fallaci, Interview with History and Conversations with Power
Markus Feldenkirchen, Die Schulz-Story
Ryan Holiday, Trust me, I’m lying
T S Satyan, Alive and Clicking
T J S George, Lessons in Journalism: The story of Pothan Joseph
Nils Ufer, Den nøgne journalist
Pete Hamill, A Drinking Life
Charlie LeDuff, Shitshow: The Country is Collapsing but the Ratings are Great
Chris Hedges, War is a force that gives us meaning
Willie Morris, North Toward Home
Jacques Pauw, The President’s Keepers
Paul Krassner, Impolite Interviews
Aman Sethi, A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi
John Hess, My Times: A Memoir of Dissent
Jorge Ramos, Stranger: The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era
Essays, fiction and literary non-fiction (and borderline cases like Capote, some of Kapuscinski, Thompson)
Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Other
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Anton Chekhov, Sakhalin Island
Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan
Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
Vasily Grossman, Life & Fate
Heinrich Boll, The lost Honour of Katharina Blum
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
Hunter S Thompson, The Rum Diary
Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
David Foster Wallace, Consider the lobster
Ryszard Kapuściński, Shah of Shahs
Jim Lynch, Truth Like the Sun
Eugenio Corti, The Red Horse
Erich Hackl, The Wedding in Auschwitz
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