Bob Schieffer's America

by Bob Schieffer

Overview

The Face the Nation commentator delivers ?a fitting companion to his career memoir, This Just In? (Texas Monthly).

Bob Schieffer's America brings together 171 of his smart, humorous, and pitch-perfect essays: from today's hard issues to the human stories that show readers who they are; from politics and presidents and tragedy to the things that touch them, make them laugh, or record the small shifts in culture that just creep up. In addition, Schieffer has written ?commentaries on my commentaries? that run throughout the book, offering further anecdotes, reflections, updates, and insights.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101145289
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/06/2009
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	491 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Bob Schieffer is a noted television journalist. He has covered Washington, DC, for CBS for more than 30 years, from the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Capitol Hill. He was the anchor and moderator of Face the Nation, CBS News’s Sunday public affairs broadcast, for nearly 15 years, also serving as CBS News’s chief Washington correspondent.  Schieffer has won virtually every award in broadcast journalism, including six Emmys and two Sigma Delta Chi Awards. His induction into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame on November 11, 2002, marks the fourth time in 2002 he has been honored by a national organization.

Editorial Reviews

Bob Schieffer has been in the news business for 45 years (he covered the JFK assassination for a Fort Worth paper) and a CBS news journalist since 1969, but it took a major event (the 1994 death of Richard Nixon) to make him a Face the Nation commentator. Since then, Schieffer's measured opinions and reflections have added new depth and perspective to that famous show. This collection of 168 commentaries brings together stories of human courage and mass tragedy, hometown fervor and far-flung crises. A graceful follow-up to Schieffer's popular memoir, This Just In.

Broadcast journalist Schieffer (This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV, 2002, etc.) collects his Sunday commentaries from Face the Nation. A few sentences about the death of Richard Nixon in 1994 launched this popular feature, which has been a fixture of the program ever since. Culled from the many hundreds written by Schieffer, 170 essays cover politics, family, history and prominent people. They have more meat than a sound bite yet remain short and pithy. Occasionally the author will come out of left field with some pleasing illumination a la Andy Rooney. At other times, he turns up the acerbity in the mode of his mentor Eric Sevareid. "Congress ran to the airport Friday," he snaps. "They're taking two weeks this year for Thanksgiving. I wouldn't ask how many days you're taking because that would be a digression." But mostly Schieffer displays an avuncular progressivism, wondering where the good, old-fangled virtues of decency, honesty and doing no harm to the innocent have gone in our political life, while finding these values still vigorous in the nation's citizenry. He gives credit where it is due, appreciatively noting Ronald Reagan's understanding "that winning an argument does not have to mean destroying your opponent," and he admits to doubts and remorse, as in his evolving opinion about the course and conduct of the Iraq war. Sometimes he simply shares his love for something, a good book, perhaps, or gently serves some advice worth the minute it takes to tell: "when I think of the stories I've missed, it was usually because I wasn't listening when someone was trying to tell me something."Insightful nuggets that express a worldview, an ethical system and a newsman'scode of conduct.

Kirkus Reviews