Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times by Bill Moyer, Julie Leininger Pycior

The Peabody Award-winning journalist shares stories and insights into our country and the crises we face in an eloquent selection ofÂ.Â.Â. commentaries (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Â Millions of Americans have invited Bill Moyers into their homes over the years. With television programs covering topics from American history, politics, and religion to the role of media and the world of ideas, he has become one of America's most trusted journalists. Now Moyers presents, for the first time, a powerful statement of his own personal beliefs?political and moral. Combining illuminating forays into American history with candid comments on today's politics, Moyers delivers perceptive and trenchant insights into the American experience. Â From his early years as a Texas journalist to his role as a founding organizer of the Peace Corps, top assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent and analyst for CBS News, and producer of many of public television's groundbreaking series, Moyers has been actively engaged in some of the most volatile episodes of the past fifty years. Drawing from these experiences, he shares his unique understanding of American politics and an enduring faith in the nation's promise and potential. Whether reflecting on today's media climate, corporate scandals, or religious and political upheavals, Moyers on America recovers the hopes of the past to establish their relevance for the present. Â Not only a good reporterÂ.Â.Â. a first-rate storyteller. ?The Boston Globe Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly I am a journalist but I am also a pilgrim, Moyers declares in this eloquent selection of his speeches and commentaries. Although these 20 pieces have been edited to resemble essays, their origin lends them a rousing urgency, as Moyers relates stories and insights in his personal journey from small-town Texas boyhood to eminent broadcast journalist. Whether he's extolling the virtues of participatory democracy based on the early 20th-century Progressive movement or lamenting recent evidence that democracy is on the auction block with politicians bought by special interests, Moyers's ability to communicate history, philosophy and personal experience simultaneously is impressive. His instinct for enlisting stories to get his message across appears throughout this collection, including tales from the years he worked for Lyndon Johnson (before and after Johnson became President). In a portrait of Johnson's political strengths and personal weaknesses, a less canny storyteller might leave out the telling anecdote about LBJ's integrating the Faculty Club of the University of Texas in 1964, but not Moyers. The same combination of candor, vividness and forthrightness animating his Johnson portrait is what gives such authority to Moyers's arguments that responsible journalism of unquestioned integrity is essential to our democratic process and that domination of news media by conglomerates, along with trends in celebrity-obsessed journalism, is undermining the freedom of the press. Moyers's wisdom, common sense and deeply felt principles should inspire and energize many readers in the very best way. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Award-winning journalist Moyers offers a thoughtful and caustic look at American politics. This first-time collection of Moyers' commentaries begins with his speech This Is Your Story. Pass It On, read by millions online and applauded for its insights into the troublesome trends in American democracy. Moyers powerfully and eloquently laments the increasing influence of the wealthy at the expense of the poor. In other essays, Moyers recalls a more progressive era in the U.S., when the government played an active role in protecting citizens, and reporters were more vigilant in their scrutiny of corruption. Reflecting on his personal beliefs and observations from his various perches as journalist, Peace Corps organizer, and top assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, Moyers offers a variety of penetrating views on the past 50 years of American politics. He laments the final fling of progressive politics in the Johnson administration and rails against heartless conservatism and corporate journalism, trends that he sees threatening the very essence of democracy. But amid the plethora of corporate scandals, shameless materialism, and religious and political chaos afoot in the nation, Moyers sees a battle to renew American democracy. A wide-ranging examination of American politics. Vanessa Bush Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved Review Bill Moyers believes with his very heart in the interchange of ideas, in individual speaking out.. . . And he is, in a very real sense, a man of faith: of faith in America. ?James Dickey, The New York Times Not only a good reporter . . . a first-rate storyteller. ?The Boston Globe The conscience of American journalism. ?Salon Bill Moyers is doing what Madison and Jefferson desperately hoped the press would do?provide information . . . so that the people would be informed enough to enable constitutional democracy to survive. ?Nat Hentoff About the Author Bill Moyers is a journalist and public commentator. He was a founding organizer of the Peace Corps, a senior White House assistant and press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1963 to 1967, the publisher of Newsday, a senior news analyst for CBS News, and the producer of groundbreaking series for public television. He is the winner of more than thirty-five Emmy Awards, nine Peabody Awards, and a National Academy of Arts & Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times and Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues, both published by The New Press. He lives in New York City and hosts a weekly series, Moyers & Company.