Journalistic memoirs: More than just war stories

There is nothing wrong with war stories, whether true or not, but the most interesting journalistic memoirs get to the bottom of the whys and wherefores of work and life in a way that is useful and provocative for us all.

Chasing Hope is one of several books on my shelf and Kindle (read the author’s review of Chasing Hope here). I enjoyed two recent books by former colleagues at the Detroit Free Press: Striving: Adventures of a Female Journalist in a Man’s World by Jo Thomas and Lost and Found: Coming of Age in the Washington Press Corps by Ellen Hume. Both are notable for the candor and courage with which the authors describe sometimes painful times in their professional and personal lives.

I also recommend Margaret Sullivan’s “Newsroom Confidential,” out in 2022, an excellent introduction to her podcast and column “American Crisis,” which explores the role of journalists in addressing growing threats to democracy and covering Trump.

Former Washington Post publisher Marty Baron avoids the word “memoir,” perhaps because his “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post” focuses more on Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post than on Baron. I reviewed it along with Adam Nagourney’s “The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Ridicule and the Transformation of Journalism.”

I’m currently reading on my Kindle: “A Native’s Return: 1945-1988” by William L. Shirer, also author of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” “A Native’s Return” is the third part of a three-volume autobiography and was published in 1990, but the discussion it contains of the McCarthy era of the 1950s is still relevant reading today.

Just picked up from my local library: “The Father and The Son,” by former Wall Street Journal editor Matt Murray. Murray’s book was published nearly 25 years ago. I’m including it here because Murray took over as interim editor of The Washington Post this month and because the story looks so good. Murray was 16 when his father sat him down at the dinner table eight years after his mother’s death and told him their lives were about to change dramatically. Here’s a free link to the book excerpt, which the Post published in 1999.

On my next reading list: “In My Time of Dying: How I Came to Terms with the Afterlife” by Sebastian Junger and “Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Accident Uncovered a Deadly Medical Mystery” by Lawrence Ingrassia.

Any recommendations for me?