For decades, Renata Adler's writing has upheld and defined the highest standards
of investigative journalism. A staff writer at The New Yorker from 1963 to 2001
, Adler has reported on civil rights from Selma, Alabama;on the war in Biafra, t
he Six-Day War, and the Vietnam War;on the Nixon impeachment inquiry and Congres
s. She has also written about cultural matters, films (as chief film critic for
The New York Times), books, politics, and pop music. Like many journalists, she
has put herself in harm's way in order to give us the news, not the news we have
become accustomed to--celebrity journalism, conventional wisdom, received ideas
--but the actual story, an account unfettered by ideology or consensus. The peri
l that Adler places herself in comes specifically from speaking up (on the basis
of careful research, common sense, original thought) when too many other writer
s have joined the pack. In this most basic and moral sense, Adler is one of the
few independent journalists writing in America today. This collection of Adler's
nonfiction draws on her early essays, reporting, and criticism, which describe
the major crises and hopeful turmoil of the 1960s, and more recent pieces concer
ned with, in her words, misrepresentation, coercion, and abuse of public process
, and the journalist's role in it. Also included are writings on film, televisio
n, and music, and several uncollected essays on Jayson Blair and the Times, and
the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore. A new epilogue by Adler provides a
n invaluable and long-overdue assessment of our culture today from one of its fo
remost chroniclers
