January 8-14, 2004

artpicks

Bob Schieffer

by A.D. Amorosi

books

Once upon a time, before TV newsies became "special report" alarmists or pitchmen with 24 hours' worth of chitchat to supply and network ephemera to sell ("This just in: Will & Grace meet new neighbor Benito Mussolini!"), anchors and correspondents, chosen after years of field work, had to make their mark in a single hour or day. Those who were able to capture and hold your interest, like Sevareid and Cronkite, became legendary elder statesmen with behind-the-scenes stories to tell. Bob Schieffer is one of those guys. And he's written a sharp, intelligent book -- This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV (Putnam) -- about the backstories of those broadcasts (as opposed to haircuts in suits like Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings, who write about so-called great American generations). As the chief Washington bureau correspondent for CBS News for over 30 years and moderator of Face the Nation, Schieffer knows where the bodies are buried: from former CBS prez Bill Paley to Palestine; from Nikita Khrushchev to 9/11; from Kennedy to Clinton; to Watergate and Bushes one and two; to reporting on the gangs of New York and Compton and a burning Mississippi. Schieffer's book is not the work of a blowhard or a desk jockey (hello, Chris Matthews). Instead, it's got the edgy grit of a guy who's been on the frontlines and the gracefulness of a man who made it out alive; he can write his own stories and still save enough secrets to maintain privacy. Either that, or he's got a volume two planned.

Bob Schieffer, Thu., Jan. 8, 7 p.m., free, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341.

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