Seymour Hersh

`

Seymour Hersh

Scoop Artist

Robert Miraldi

448 pages
13 photographs

Hardcover

October 2013

978-1-61234-475-1

$34.95 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

October 2013

978-1-61234-476-8

$34.95 Add to Cart

About the Book

Seymour Hersh has been the most important, famous, and controversial journalist in the United States for the last forty years. From his exposé of the My Lai massacre in 1969 to his revelations about torture at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, Hersh has consistently captured the public imagination, spurred policymakers to reform, and drawn the ire of presidents. 
 
From the streets of Chicago to the newsrooms of the most powerful newspapers and magazines in the United States, Seymour Hersh tells the story of this Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author. Robert Miraldi scrutinizes the scandals and national figures that have drawn Hersh’s attention, from My Lai to Watergate, from John F. Kennedy to Henry Kissinger.
 
This first-ever biography captures a stunningly successful career of important exposés and stunning accomplishments from a man whose unpredictable and quirky personality has turned him into an icon of American life and the unrivaled “scoop artist” of American journalism. 
 


 

Author Bio

ROBERT MIRALDI is an award-winning author, journalist, and columnist who has taught at the State University of New York for thirty years. In 2003 his biography, The Pen Is Mightier: The Muckraking Life of Charles Edward Russell, was named the best book in the country in journalism and mass communication. He is the author of two books and editor of three others. In 1992 he was a Fulbright Scholar, lecturing in the Netherlands. His writing on the First Amendment has won national awards. A PhD in American Studies, he teaches classes on media law, press history, and news reporting.

Praise

"An important, long-overdue biography."—Kirkus

"Young, independent journalistsbe it in newspapers or onlineshould take the time to read Scoop Artist and learn from Hersh’s example. Robert Miraldi has given readers an excellent overview of Seymour Hersha true scoop artist."Andrew W. Griffin, Red Dirt Report

“This book is important. . . . A graphic, fact-filled biography of Sy Hersh, probably America’s most unstoppable investigative journalist. You may remember him as the man who discovered the My Lai massacre but Hersh has [also] spent a half-century bulldozing our government and others when they try to deceive the public and stain democracy. Robert Miraldi has dug out details you’ve never heard before. The clam of investigative reporters has been shrinking in the digital age. That’s another reason this biography is important. This Hersh book is impressive.”—Sydney Schanberg, Pulitzer Prize–winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times

“At last! Someone has cast a magnifying glass on the Sherlock Holmes of investigative reporters! Robert Miraldi’s close-up examination of Seymour Hersh revels in the triumphs, controversies, and passions that have accompanied that reporter and unhinged Washington for fifty years. But more: Miraldi sheds light on what motivates a powerful bull-in-a-china-shop investigator and on how Hersh goes about finding all that exquisite porcelain to smash.”—John Darnton, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and best-selling novelist

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Chasing Sy Hersh
Chapter 1. The Story No One Wanted
Chapter 2. The Scoop Heard ’Round the World
Chapter 3. Hersh Becomes a Target
Chapter 4. “Front Page” Lessons in Chicago
Chapter 5. Selling, Publishing, Failing
Chapter 6. From the “Front Page” to the Pentagon
Chapter 7. At War with the Pentagon
Chapter 8. Fighting His Editors
Chapter 9. Finding America’s Hidden Arsenal
Chapter 10. Speaking for Gene McCarthy
Chapter 11. Stunning Triumph over Germs
Chapter 12. Scoop Artist Meets the Viet Cong
Chapter 13. The Times Calls 
Chapter 14. Digging into Watergate
Chapter 15. Cambodia, Bombs, and Impeachment
Chapter 16. Hunting the Coup Plotters
Chapter 17. Skeletons Tumble from the CIA Closet
Chapter 18. The Submarine Caper
Chapter 19. Going after “The Godfather”
Chapter 20. The Big Apple Turns Sour
Chapter 21. Scoop Artist versus Dr. Kissinger
Chapter 22. The Summer’s Literary Furor
Chapter 23. Who Shot Down the Korean Airliner?
Chapter 24. Reporting the Worst-Kept Secret in the World
Chapter 25. Sex, Lies, and Fraud
Chapter 26. Going after Sy Hersh
Chapter 27. The New Yorker Years
Chapter 28. An Alternative View of the Mideast
Chapter 29. Back on Top
Epilogue: A Muckraker’s Unfinished Business
Selected Works of Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh Timeline
Notes
Index

Awards

2014 Ann M. Sperber Award from Fordham University for the best journalism biography in the nation
2013 Nieman Reports Top 10 Investigative Journalism Book

Also of Interest