Talk: NPR's Susan Stamberg Considers All Things

by Susan Stamberg

Book Overview

The first woman to anchoar a national nightly news program, Stamberg brought her inimitable style to National Public Radio in 1971 and helped it grow into an influential network with a weekly audience... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679411089
• ISBN13: 9780679411086
• Release Date: May 1993
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 380 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Charming, Intelligent, and -- Surprise! -- Even a Bit Acerbic

Admittedly, TALK has been out-of-print for a while, but I'm still surprised that there aren't more reader reviews for it. For anyone who has enjoyed Susan Stamberg's warm, sometimes droll persona, this book is a treat. This is partially because it is quite easy to imagine Stamberg reading the material in TALK aloud. Here, she has cherry-picked transcripts of shows from over the years that are important to her. Some of them are meant to show how prescient the interviewees were (on matters ranging from child-rearing to global warming to vegetarianism), some reflect her fascination with the arts (a bit too much material on Ernest Hemingway, I think), and some are just her personal favorites, for example, an interview with a very game Joan Didion. Of particular interest is seeing hints of the iron hand inside Stamberg's velvet glove (er, microphone?), which I've never noticed before. For example, read her assessment of Nancy Reagan: "I felt there was no weight to her -- neither physically nor emotionally nor intellectually. She was like a glass of champagne without the gaiety of bubbles. It wasn't that the champagne had gone flat. It seemed, instead, as if the bubbles had just never been there." Ouch.