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Overview
A patent medicine tycoon, a creatively zany editor, and a mysterious graffiti artist named Bozo Texarino conspired to launch Robert Manning in the word trade more than half a century ago, and he's never had the time or inclination to look back - until now. The Swamp Root Chronicle is the story of a distinguished career in journalism and public affairs. It is a rollicking tale, mostly happy, sometimes poignant, told by a man who found the practice of journalism to be not only a high calling but a way of "being paid to have fun." His journey of discovery takes Manning from a small city in upstate New York to encounters with many of the great events and dominant personalities of our time. From the White House during the final days of FDR and the coming of the nuclear age to the United Nations in its tumultuous early days and the creation of the state of Israel, Time and Life magazines in their heyday, campaigning with Adlai Stevenson, travels as a foreign correspondent, inside the administration of John F. Kennedy as an Assistant Secretary of State, and then for sixteen years as editor in chief of the prestigious Atlantic Monthly. Before the journey is over, the reader shares the pleasure of many personal encounters - drinking, fishing, and talking with Ernest Hemingway in Cuba; covering the great racehorse, Native Dancer; ruminating about life and art with Henry Moore; the pleasures and tribulations of working for the press lord Henry Luce and his then-powerful magazines; glimpses of Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, and Nikita Khrushchev; breakfasts with John F. Kennedy; and an insider's look at both the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations. Manning's chronicle is compelling not only for the events and people he tells of but for the telling itself. It is a combination of fascinating anecdote and a prose style that brings to mind the charm of Russell Baker's Growing Up and the bite of H. L. Mencken's Newspaper Days. Reading The Swamp Root Chronicle is almost asEditorials
Publishers Weekly -
Born in 1919, Manning ( The American Experience in Vietnam ) chronicles his varied and exciting journalistic career in a diverting autobiography. Work as a copyboy and then a reporter for his hometown newspaper, the Binghamton (N.Y.) Press , led Manning to interesting assignments with the AP and UPI during WW II. While a writer for Time , he was tapped to become President John F. Kennedy's press liaison. A successful stint from 1966 to 1980 as editor-in-chief of the prestigious Atlantic ended bitterly when real-estate developer Mort Zuckerman bought the magazine and fired Manning. Portraits of Ernest Hemingway, Henry Luce, JFK and other literary and political figures Manning worked with add further spice to this buoyant, good-humored memoir. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)Library Journal
Manning offers an account of his journalistic odyssey from copy boy at the Binghamton Press to editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly (1966-80). It's an anecdotal journal, a reminiscence about newspapers' good old days brightened by Manning's fine attention to wordcraft. When editing the Atlantic , for example, he wanted to ``put together a magazine that offered one kind of predictability, call it expectability, while avoiding the other kind, the predictability that induces monotony.'' Each chapter stands alone as a personal (occasionally precious) and historical vignette. Swamp Root, incidentally, was a ``kickapoo joy-juice sort of potion'' advertised in Binghamton at the turn of the century. Not essential reading but thoroughly enjoyable.-- Jo Cates, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, Ill.Book Details
Published
February 4, 1993
Publisher
New York : Norton, c1992.
Pages
416
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780393030907