Reporting Live

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When she first started out in network television, Lesley Stahl was 30 years old and the men she shared the newsroom with were already legendary. In the ensuing 25 years and counting, Stahl has covered every major story and has become one of the most highly regarded reporters in the country. In this celebrity-filled, anecdote-packed memoir, Lesley Stahl tells how she has kept her focus - and her sense of humor - through all of this success. While Stahl cut her teeth on Washington political reporting, cultivating sources and gradually building a reputation as a "scoopster," she learned to overcome the stigma of affirmative action. She went on to cover the next three Presidents, witnessing the disintegration of the Jimmy Carter Presidency, the rise and fall and rise again of Ronald Reagan's, and the unfocused regular-guyness of George Bush's. She offers sharp and nuanced portraits of these presidents and their wives as well as of many of her guests on "Face the Nation," which she moderated for eight years. Stahl also describes the ups and downs of network television news as competition from cable began to siphon off the audience.

SYNOPSIS

In her more than 25 years at CBS News, Lesley Stahl, the woman TV Guide called "the toughest interviewer on television," has seen it all, and now she shares her experiences in the behind-the-scenes memoir Reporting Live. From her early days covering the Watergate scandal to the eight years she spent on "Face the Nation" and her current work on "60 Minutes," Stahl has confronted presidents, network moguls, crooked politicians, rock musicians, movie stars, and even competing journalists with the same tough-but-fair approach that has distinguished her career.

FROM THE CRITICS

Stanley Cloud - Columbia Journalism Review

Stahl emerges from Reporting Live as a tough, caring pro with a winning and self-deprecating sense of humor....Moving.

Los Angeles Times

Skillfully written...compelling.

Good Housekeeping

A graceful, honest memoir...Stahl's writing resonates.

Philip Terzian

It takes a certain kind of character to rise to eminence in TV newssurmounting all manner of obstacles and prejudicebefore landing int the sacred precincts of "60 Minutes'.....Whatever it isLesley Stahl has it. —The American Spectator

Robin Toner - The New York Times Book Review

Stahl has the anecdotes and her writing the texture you would expect from a correspondent who spent a decade on the White House....less an attempt to analyze the policies and politics of the period she covered than a you-are-there journal of what it was like to be there covering it.Read all 11 "From The Critics" >

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