Marking the centennial of the founding of Columbia University's school of journalism, this candid history of the school's evolution is set against the backdrop of the ongoing debate over whether journalism can—or should—be taught in America's universities.Originally known as "the Pulitzer School" in honor of its chief benefactor, the newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia's school of journalism has long been a significant and highly visible presence in the journalism community...

“HELP! HELP! HELP! The cat is sleeping on my head!” Although Gryphon’s mom keeps removing the cat from her son’s bedroom, nothing seems to stop the determined feline from returning. This humorous tale of a boy and his cat trying to get a good nights sleep.

The inside story of the working life of an extraordinary guide dog.Guide dogs are carefully bred and trained to help their handlers live safely and independently. But what makes one dog truly exceptional?Life With Jefferson tells the true story of the remarkable partnership between Jefferson and Penny Leclair, a deafblind woman whose independence depended on finding the right guide dog. After two years of searching, Jefferson was chosen for his uni...

It was the 1960s -- a time of economic boom and social strife. Young women poured into the workplace, but the "Help Wanted" ads were segregated by gender and the "Mad Men" office culture was rife with sexual stereotyping and discrimination.Lynn Povich was one of the lucky ones, landing a job at Newsweek, renowned for its cutting-edge coverage of civil rights and the "Swinging Sixties." Nora Ephron, Jane Bryant Quinn, Ellen Goodman, and Susan Brownmiller all started there a...

The first ever biography of one of Canada’s best-known and most colourful personalities by an award-winning author.From his northern childhood on, it was clear that Pierre Berton (1920—2004) was different from his peers. Over the course of his eighty-four years, he would become the most famous Canadian media figure of his time, in newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and books — sometimes all at once. Berton dominated bookstore shelves for almost half a century, winning Govern...

The story of how our bottomless appetite for novelty, gossip, and melodrama has turned everything—news, politics, religion, high culture—into one vast public entertainment.Neal Gabler calls them "lifies," those blockbusters written in the medium of life that dominate the media and the national conversation for weeks, months, even years: the death of Princess Diana, the trial of O.J. Simpson, Kenneth Starr vs. William Jefferson Clinton. Real Life as Entertainment is hardly a new phe...

“This is the history of the gay and lesbian movement that we’ve been waiting for.” —The Washington PostThe sweeping story of the struggle for gay and lesbian rights—based on amazing interviews with politicians, military figures, and members of the entire LGBT community who face these challenges every day.The fight for gay and lesbian civil rights—the years of outrageous injustice, the early battles, the heart-breaking defeats, and ...

Facts are and must be the coin of the realm in a democracy, for government "of the people, by the people and for the people," requires and assumes to some extent an informed citizenry. Unfortunately, for citizens in the United States and throughout the world, distinguishing between fact and fiction has always been a formidable challenge, often with real life and death consequences. But now it is more difficult and confusing than ever. The Internet Age makes comment indistinguishable from f...

In Hollywood Left and Right, Steven J. Ross tells a story that has escaped public attention: the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics. Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsized influence on American politics. Through compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema--Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Maye...

Bayard Rustin is one of the most important figures in the history of the American civil rights movement. Before Martin Luther King, before Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin was working to bring the cause to the forefront of America's consciousness. A teacher to King, an international apostle of peace, and the organizer of the famous 1963 March on Washington, he brought Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence to America and helped launch the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, Rustin has been largely era...

Before Liz Smith and Perez Hilton became household names in the world of celebrity gossip, before Rush Limbaugh became the voice of conservatism, there was Hedda Hopper. In 1938, this 52-year-old struggling actress rose to fame and influence writing an incendiary gossip column, “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood,” that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers throughout Hollywood’s golden age. Often eviscerating moviemakers and stars, her column earned her a nasty reputation in the fi...

Few books have caused as big a stir as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, when it was published in April 1939. By May, it was the nation's number one bestseller, but in Kern County, California -- the Joads' newfound home -- the book was burned publicly and banned from library shelves. Obscene in the Extreme tells the remarkable story behind this fit of censorship.When W. B. "Bill" Camp, a giant cotton and potato grower, presided over its burning in downtown Bak...