Fans pick 100 books like Washington

The book takes place beginning in the 1960s – a time of economic strength and cultural change. An increasing number of young, educated women entered the workforce, yet the newspaper help wanted ads were segregated by gender and the discrimination was common. In the midst of this time, Lynn Povich was hired at Newsweek, renowned for its strong coverage of civil rights and the changing social mores. But in reality, the job was a career dead end. Women researchers only occasionally became reporters, very rarely writers, and never editors. The limitations for women journalists were obvious.

Then in March 1970, Newsweek published a cover story about the Women’s Liberation Movement called “Women in Revolt”. It was at the time that more than 40 Newsweek women charged the magazine with employment discrimination. Povich was one of the plaintiffs. In the book, Povich details the lives of several lawsuit participants. She… show more.

This book explores a generation of women who often overtly questioned gender norms. Theirs was a generation that imagined it would reinvent the world. These women of 1969 looked at labor, family, and politics through a new lens. The author explores the gender politics of the time and its impact on the personal. After all, this was a class at the crossroads. They were faced with the traditional message for middle-class women as wives and mothers while also being told they could have careers. It is important to note that this was Hillary Rodman (Clinton)’s graduating class.

On Commencement Day at Wellesley, Rodham told her classmates, “We are, all of us, exploring a world that none of us understands and attempting to create within that an uncertainty. The only tool we have ultimately to use is our lives.” In response, Horn explores the lives of the women as they explored… show more.

From the country’s capital, the city’s journalists translated political power and social news – as well as a thriving social scene. They covered stories that were shared across the country. A mix of men and women, big names and freelancers, these journalists reveals behind-the-scenes reporting and relationships. The stories reveal how and why news is made. These watchdogs of government were often intertwined with politicians professionally and sometimes personally. This book offers a helpful understanding of Washington, D.C. journalism – and is highly entertaining.

The book Out on Assignment examines the careers of overlooked women who wrote for major metropolitan newspapers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Using archival materials, Alice Fahs describes a community of female journalists from numerous American cities. These newspaper women were part of a wave of women seeking a journalism career although their options were often limited. Although a few female journalists found hard-news reporting jobs in stunt work and undercover assignments, most found work in the women’s pages.

In these sections, they interviewed celebrities, advice columns, and suffrage news. Very little research has been done on women’s page journalism; this book provides an excellent foundation.

Journalism takes many forms, and this readable study by a journalist-turned-academic examines some of the more alternative styles and outlets that operate beyond the corporate mainstream media industries. Alternative they may be, but the projects studied by Forde produce proper journalism rather than the uninformed commentary or aggressive shouting adopted by some who like to style themselves as ‘alternative media.’ None of the journalists she interviews would see themselves as heroes but, by defying the odds to produce independent reporting in the cause of social justice around the world, they engage in countless small acts of heroism every day. 

A highly perceptive if rather depressing examination of how the British media works, how expensive investigative journalism has largely given way to opinion columns and trivia about so-called celebrities, how stories are often not stories, how papers dress up partisan opinion as fact. In short, an exposure of the falsehoods, distortion, and propaganda that have corrupted the media. Nick Davies was a journalist at the Guardian.

This book explores the relationship between writer and subject and provides a lesson on the lengths one should go in exercising one’s craft. An ironic twist comes in the form of Finkel himself being a victim of a crime, which gives rise to the thrust of this story. As a fan of memoirs and true crime, this book kept my interest all of the way through.

Before Life there was the Saturday Evening Post, a roaring success capturing the spirit of Middle America at a time when Middle America defined the cultural ethos of the nation. But by the late 1950s the potent reach of television advertising undermined the general-interest magazine business model, and the Post slipped into an inexorable spiral of decline that its top executives could never quite handle or even understand. There’s plenty of pathos and human drama as they struggle with forces beyond their control. 

First published in 1990 – based on a series of articles originally written for The New Yorker, this book is a warning to true crime authors the world over about the morality of reaching out and writing with and about murderers. 

The journalist in question is Joe McGinniss and the murderer is the former Special Forces Captain Dr Jeffrey MacDonald who became the subject of McGinniss’s 1983 book Fatal Vision. Is it ethical to collaborate with someone who has been accused of murder? What are the pitfalls that need to be managed? And, at the end of the day, who is conning who – the journalist or the murderer?

Some books center on an argument, some focus on narrative, and some revolve around characters. What impressed me about this book is that it does all three remarkably well.

I was amazed to learn how some of the most powerful publishers in the U.S. and U.K. either dismissed the Nazi threat or (like Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail) openly cheered for Hitler.

It also helps that the five men and one woman included in this “axis” all had fascinating backgrounds and quirky personalities, which Olmsted presents in wonderfully concise sketches.