Description
Book SynopsisShelby Scates's thirty-five-year career as a prize-winning journalist and columnist for International News Service, United Press International, the Associated Press, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has taken him to centers of action across this country and to wars and conflicts in many of the world's danger zones. Born in the rural South in the 1930s, Scates rejected the racism he saw there and in his late teens set out across the United States eventually to land in Seattle, attend the University of Washington, and launch himself into a world of work, travel, and adventure as a merchant seaman and soldier. He entered journalism as a wire-service reporter hired in Manhattan and assigned to the Dallas bureau. Reporting the political beat brought Scates to Baton Rouge and New Orleans to observe the remarkable performance and influence of Earl Long as governor of Louisiana; in 1957 to Little Rock, Arkansas, to witness a constitutional crisis, the early struggle to integrate the pub
Trade Review"Too bad Ben Hecht never met Shelby Scates, a journalist’s journalist. His memoir is an enchanting crackle of political history (I especially loved the stories about Huey Long and JFK), war chronicles (in the Middle East and Cambodia), and other treacherous adventures, like his white-knuckle climb up the Karakoram mountain range in Pakistan. And it is all so elegantly written you’ll despair when you finish it, as I did. A real friend of a book."
-- Lesley Stahl * 60 Minutes *
"A fascinating look at the inner workings of journalism by a conscientious reporter."
* Booklist *
Table of ContentsObion Country
The Makings of a Journalist: Blue Sky, Blue Water
Politics
Journalist
Journalism
Newsman
Olympia
1968
More Happenstance
The Six-Day War
The Palestinians: The "War of Attrition"
Cambodia and Us
Mountains
Hickman
A Few Words about Sources
Index
Maps
