Journalism Reading List
December 20, 2007 by lancespeere
CMA members often ask for recommended books about journalism. Below is a list of those suggestions. Credit for much of this compilation goes to Tom Winski at Lindsey Wilson College. Recommendations for other advisers have also been added. If you know of a book that you think should be added to the list, contact the blog administrator.
- The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times by
Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones - Letters to a Young Journalist by Samuel Freedman
- Letters from the Editor by Bill Woo, edited by Phil Meyer
- Deadlines Past by Walter Mears
- Ben Bradlee’s memoir
- The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men, and the New York Times by Nan
Robertson - One More Time by Mike Royko
- Any of the police novels written by Edna Buchanan
- And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts
- Trouble in the World or other works by P.J. O’Rourke
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
- How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis
- Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- The First Casualty by Phillip Knightly
- No Cheering in the Press Box by Jerome Holtzman
- Make No Law by Anthony Lewis
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
- Common Ground by J. Lukas Anthony
- Personal History Katharine Graham, Personal History
- Flashing Before My Eyes by Dick Schaap
- The Yellow Kids by Joyce Milton
- The Press and America by Edwin Emery
- Best Newspaper Writing, annual series by The Poynter Institute
- Four Theories of the Press by Fred S. Siebert, et. al.
- Tuned Out by David Mindich
- Covering Violence by Roger Simpson and William Cote
- Up Front by Bill Mauldin
- Ernie’s War by David Nichols
- The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel
- Working by Studs Terkel
- Growing Up by Russell Baker
- All the President’s Men by Woodward and Bernstein
- Shaking the Foundations, edited by Bruce Shapiro
- Literary Journalism, edited by Jean Chance and William McKeen
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
- On the Record by Tom Wicker
- The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
- The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Wolfe
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Wolfe
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Tom Sawyer
- Most of Ernest Hemingway’s novels
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
- Arc of Justice (about civil rights in Detroit during Jazz Age)
- A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
- Any of John Updike’s “Rabbit” novels
- Paper Lion by George Plimpton
- The Kingdom and the Power by Gay Talese
- Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
- Executioner’s Song by Normal Mailer
- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter Thompson
- Any number of works by
- Joan Didion
- David Halberstam
- Nora Ephron
- Gail Sheehy
- Late Innings, or just about any other baseball book by Roger Angell
- Poison Penmanship or other works by Jessica Mitford
[...] and if you have suggestions, please pass them on. Here’s a taste of some of those books. The full list can be found linked from the Resources [...]
You should consider adding Roger Kahn’s masterful _The Boys of Summer_, which tells the story of Kahn’s experience covering the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952-53 for the New York Herald Tribune. It’s one of the greatest books on baseball ever written — many would say it’s the best — and for me (and I’m sure many others) it was the book that inspired me to become a sportswriter.