John Maxwell Hamilton

In The French 75, John Maxwell Hamilton tracks down the many lives of this protean cocktail. The drink, named by French propagandists during World War I, was said to pack a punch as powerful as that nation's celebrated 75 mm cannon. At the end of the century, the French 75 surfaced at Arnaud's Restaurant and became as entrenched in New Orleans as the famed second line. Hamilton explores the kaleidoscopic variety of the French 75 over the years and across continents.

Winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize by the Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public PolicyManipulating the Masses tells the story of the enduring threat to American democracy that arose out of World War I: the establishment of pervasive, systematic propaganda as an instrument of the state. During the Great War, the federal government exercised unprecedented power to shape the views and attitudes of American citizens. Its agent for this was the Committee on Public Information (CPI), established by President Woodrow Wilson one week after the United States entered the war in April 1917.Driven by its fiery chief, George Creel, the CPI reached every crevice of the nation, every day, and extended widely abroad. It established the first national newspaper, made prepackaged news a quotidian aspect of governing, and pioneered the concept of public diplomacy. It spread the Wilson administration's messages through articles, cartoons, books, and advertisements in newspapers and magazines; through feature films and volunteer Four Minute Men who spoke during intermission; through posters plastered on buildings and along highways; and through pamphlets distributed by the millions. It enlisted the nation's leading progressive journalists, advertising executives, and artists. It harnessed American universities and their professors to create propaganda and add legitimacy to its mission.Even as Creel insisted that the CPI was a conduit for reliable, fact-based information, the office regularly sanitized news, distorted facts, and played on emotions. Creel extolled transparency but established front organizations. Overseas, the CPI secretly subsidized news organs and bribed journalists. At home, it challenged the loyalty of those who occasionally questioned its tactics. Working closely with federal intelligence agencies eager to sniff out subversives and stifle dissent, the CPI was an accomplice to the Wilson administration's trampling of civil liberties.Until now, the full story of the CPI has never been told. John Maxwell Hamilton consulted over 150 archival collections in the United States and Europe to write this revealing history, which shows the shortcuts to open, honest debate that even well-meaning propagandists take to bend others to their views. Every element of contemporary government propaganda has antecedents in the CPI. It is the ideal vehicle for understanding the rise of propaganda, its methods of operation, and the threat it poses to democracy.

Manipulating the Masses tells the story of the enduring threat to American democracy that arose out of World War I: the establishment of pervasive, systematic propaganda as an instrument of the state. During the Great War, the federal government exercised unprecedented power to shape the views and attitudes of American citizens. Its agent for this was the Committee on Public Information (CPI), established by President Woodrow Wilson one week after the United States entered the war in April 1917.Driven by its fiery chief, George Creel, the CPI reached every crevice of the nation, every day, and extended widely abroad. It established the first national newspaper, made prepackaged news a quotidian aspect of governing, and pioneered the concept of public diplomacy. It spread the Wilson administration's messages through articles, cartoons, books, and advertisements in newspapers and magazines; through feature films and volunteer Four Minute Men who spoke during intermission; through posters plastered on buildings and along highways; and through pamphlets distributed by the millions. It enlisted the nation's leading progressive journalists, advertising executives, and artists. It harnessed American universities and their professors to create propaganda and add legitimacy to its mission.Even as Creel insisted that the CPI was a conduit for reliable, fact-based information, the office regularly sanitized news, distorted facts, and played on emotions. Creel extolled transparency but established front organizations. Overseas, the CPI secretly subsidized news organs and bribed journalists. At home, it challenged the loyalty of those who occasionally questioned its tactics. Working closely with federal intelligence agencies eager to sniff out subversives and stifle dissent, the CPI was an accomplice to the Wilson administration's trampling of civil liberties.Until now, the full story of the CPI has never been told. John Maxwell Hamilton consulted over 150 archival collections in the United States and Europe to write this revealing history, which shows the shortcuts to open, honest debate that even well-meaning propagandists take to bend others to their views. Every element of contemporary government propaganda has antecedents in the CPI. It is the ideal vehicle for understanding the rise of propaganda, its methods of operation, and the threat it poses to democracy.

Finding the News tells Peter Copeland's fast-paced story of becoming a distinguished journalist. Starting in Chicago as a night police reporter, Copeland went on to work as a war correspondent in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa before covering national politics in Washington, DC, where he rose to be bureau chief of the E. W. Scripps Company. The lessons he learned about accuracy and fairness during his long career are especially relevant today, given widespread concerns about the performance of the media, potential bias, and the proliferation of so-called ""fake news."" He offers an honest and revealing narrative, told with surprising humor, about how he learned the craft of news reporting.Copeland's story begins in 1980, when a colleague hastily declared him a full-fledged reporter after barely four days of training. He went on to learn the business the old-fashioned way: by chasing the news in thirty countries and across five continents. As a young person entering journalism and reporting during some of recent history's most fraught military situations, including Operation Desert Storm and the US invasions of Panama and Somalia, Copeland discovered the craft was his calling. Looking back on his career, Copeland asserts his most important lessons were not about reporting, writing, or the latest technologies, but about the core values that underlie quality journalism: accuracy, fairness, and speed. Replete with behind-the-scenes stories about learning the trade, Copeland's inspiring account builds into a heartfelt defense of journalism ""done the right way"" and serves as a call to action for today's reporters. The values he learned as a cub reporter are needed now more than ever, he argues, as the integrity and motives of even seasoned journalists are called into question by political partisans. Copeland admits that those critics are not entirely wrong but contends that exciting new technologies, combined with a return to old-school news values, could usher in a golden age of journalism.

Winner of the Goldsmith Prize, the Tankard Book Award, and the American Journalism Historians Association's Book of the Year, John Maxwell Hamilton's Journalism's Roving Eye has quickly become the definitive history of American foreign reporting. This edition includes a new preface and updated text that reflects the most current developments in foreign reporting. Beginning with the colonial era, the book focuses on underlying factors- such as technology and public opinion- as well as a cavalcade of personalities who bring the narrative to life in arresting detail, making this an indispensable resource for anyone eager to understand the evolution of foreign newsgathering.

There are few people in the world who have more opportunity for getting close to the hot interesting things of one's time than the special correspondent of a great paper,"" George Lynch, a veteran British correspondent, wrote in Impressions of a War Correspondent, published in 1903. He made it all sound glorious, just the way war correspondents like to recount their experiences on the battlefield. But in a few months he had less to exult about. Lynch and a distinguished throng of foreign correspondents with high hopes of a good story assembled in Tokyo to cover the Russo-Japanese War -- a monumental conflict that would mark the first modern defeat of a Western force by an Asian one -- only to discover that the authorities would not let them ""close to the hot interesting things."" Corralled in the Imperial Hotel, the journalists had nothing much to do except tell stories in the bar and write about local flora. A few of them, including Jack London and Richard Harding Davis, decided to contribute short autobiographical stories recounting their most exciting journalistic experiences for a book to be edited by Lynch and his American colleague, Frederick Palmer. The correspondents told their tales in different ways -- prose, poems, sketches, and even a short play. Their stories recounted their routines, failures, and triumphs, including durviving battles and waiting to see action. One contributor imagines bewhiskered correspondents in 1950 still awaiting permission from Japan to go to the front -- only to learn the war had been over for thirty-nine years. Printed locally by a Japanese printer and largely forgotten until now, In Many Wars, by Many War Correspondents offers colourful stories and insights about the lives and personalities of some of history's most celebrated war correspondents. With a foreword by John Maxwell Hamilton that chronicles the circumstances under which the contributors compiled the book, this new edition opens a window into the fascinating world of foreign newsgathering at the turn of the twentieth century.

In all of journalism, nowhere are the stakes higher than in foreign news-gathering. For media owners, it is the most difficult type of reporting to finance; for editors, the hardest to oversee. Correspondents, roaming large swaths of the planet, must acquire expertise that home-based reporters take for granted- facility with the local language, for instance, or an understanding of local cultures. Adding further to the challenges, they must put news of the world in context for an audience with little experience and often limited interest in foreign affairs- a task made all the more daunting because of the consequence to national security.In Journalism's Roving Eye, John Maxwell Hamilton- a historian and former foreign correspondent- provides a sweeping and definitive history of American foreign news reporting from its inception to the present day and chronicles the economic and technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as well as the cavalcade of colorful personalities who shaped readers' perceptions of the world across two centuries.From the colonial era- when newspaper printers hustled down to wharfs to collect mail and periodicals from incoming ships- to the ongoing multimedia press coverage of the Iraq War, Hamilton explores journalism's constant- and not always successful- efforts at ""dishing the foreign news,"" as James Gordon Bennett put it in the mid-nineteenth century to describe his approach in the New York Herald. He details the highly partisan coverage of the French Revolution, the early emergence of ""special correspondents"" and the challenges of organizing their efforts, the profound impact of the non-yellow press in the run-up to the Spanish-American War, the increasingly sophisticated machinery of propaganda and censorship that surfaced during World War I, and the ""golden age"" of foreign correspondence during the interwar period, when outlets for foreign news swelled and a large number of experienced, independent journalists circled the globe. From the Nazis' intimidation of reporters to the ways in which American popular opinion shaped coverage of Communist revolution and the Vietnam War, Hamilton covers every aspect of delivering foreign news to American doorsteps.Along the way, Hamilton singles out a fascinating cast of characters, among them Victor Lawson, the overlooked proprietor of the Chicago Daily News, who pioneered the concept of a foreign news service geared to American interests; Henry Morton Stanley, one of the first reporters to generate news on his own with his 1871 expedition to East Africa to ""find Livingstone""; and Jack Belden, a forgotten brooding figure who exemplified the best in combat reporting. Hamilton details the experiences of correspondents, editors, owners, publishers, and network executives, as well as the political leaders who made the news and the technicians who invented ways to transmit it. Their stories bring the narrative to life in arresting detail and make this an indispensable book for anyone wanting to understand the evolution of foreign news-gathering.Amid the steep drop in the number of correspondents stationed abroad and the recent decline of the newspaper industry, many fear that foreign reporting will soon no longer exist. But as Hamilton shows in this magisterial work, traditional correspondence survives alongside a new type of reporting. Journalism's Roving Eye offers a keen understanding of the vicissitudes in foreign news, an understanding imperative to better seeing what lies ahead.

In September 2005, just days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, journalists from the Times-Picayune and WWL-TV asked for and received assistance from LSU's Manship School of Mass Communication. The staff of the Times-Picayune used the School's computer labs to publish an online edition of the paper within hours of their arrival and a print edition just five days after the storm. WWL-TV reporters set up shop in the School's television facility and were on the air a few hours later, telling Katrina's story. What happened at the Manship School during that September week affirmed the ascendancy of this illustrious program. From a single journalism course offered during the 1912--1913 session, the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication has a long, rich tradition of excellence. In The Manship School, Ronald Garay, a longtime faculty member and former associate dean, traces not only the story of the Manship School but its role in the evolution of media education in general.Hugh Mercer Blain, a professor in the English department at LSU in the early 1900s, created the first LSU journalism courses and curriculum with the support of then LSU president Thomas Boyd, making LSU one of the first universities to offer journalism education. Garay describes Blain's efforts to structure a fledgling journalism department and his success in gaining national recognition for what soon would become the LSU School of Journalism and later the Manship School of Mass Communication. Garay chronicles the subsequent building of full-fledged journalism units in liberal arts colleges; the addition of new fields such as broadcasting, advertising, public relations, and political communication; the creation of doctoral programs; and the emergence of serious research on the impact of media on society. Throughout, Garay introduces the students, faculty, directors, and alumni who played important roles in the school's history -- including pioneer political consultant Raymond Strother, former Associated Press head Wes Gallagher, and Reader's Digest chairman and former CEO Thomas Ryder -- and details the evolution of LSU's student media, particularly The Reveille, KLSU-FM, and Tiger-TV. The book also describes the Manship School's emergence as an independent college at LSU and Dean John Maxwell Hamilton's role in re-orienting the School's intellectual and professional mission, raising the School's stature and visibility nationally, and incorporating state-of-the-art technology in classrooms and labs. The Manship School provides a valuable and comprehensive record of one of LSU's most distinguished units.

Edgar Snow (1905--1972) was one of the most notable Western journalists to report on China in both the revolutionary and postrevolutionary periods. He first became famous in the mid-1930s when he broke through a Nationalist blockade and reached the Communists in northwest China. For nearly a decade, no foreign reporter had seen the Communists, who were widely regarded as a ragtag bandit army. Snow took them seriously as a national movement. His reporting in the now-famous book Red Star over China was major news, even to the Chinese, thousands of whom joined the Communists after reading it. It has remained a seminal reference on the early Chinese Communist movement. In this award-winning biography, journalist John Maxwell Hamilton follows Snow from his birth in Kansas City to his rise as a celebrated foreign correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, his ostracism during the cold war, and his role as a singular journalistic bridge between Communist China and the United States. With a new preface by the author, this revealing portrait of the widely misunderstood Snow firmly establishes him as a model for the kind of committed reporting that is crucial to understanding our interdependent world.

Everyone knows which books people buy; they can just look at the best-seller lists. But who knows which books people steal? Who, for that matter, knows that authors ruin the book market by writing too much? Or why book critics are not critical? Or why librarians need to throw out more books? Who, indeed, knows the answer to that all-important question in our democracy: should presidents and presidential candidates write books? (The answer is no.)In this irreverent analysis of the book industry, John Maxwell Hamilton -- a longtime journalist and public radio commentator -- answers these questions and many more, proving that the best way to study books is not to take them too seriously. He provides a rich history of the book -- from the days when monks laboriously hand-copied texts to the tidal wave of Titanic tie-ins -- and gives a succinct overview of the state of the industry today, including writing, marketing, promoting, reviewing, ghostwriting, and collecting.Throughout, Hamilton peppers his prose with spicy tidbits of information that will fascinate bibliophiles everywhere. For instance, did you know that Walt Whitman was fired from a government job because his boss found Leaves of Grass, and its author, immoral? Or that the most stolen book in the United States is the Bible, followed by The Joy of Sex? How about that Dan Quayle's 1989 Christmas card read, ""May our nation continue to be a beakon of hope to the world""? Or that Casanova was an ardent lover of books as well as women?Hamilton offers an inside look at the history and business of book reviewing, explaining why, more often than not, reviewers resemble ""counselors at a self-esteem camp"" and examining the enormous impact of the ""Oprah effect"" on the market. As the self-appointed Emily Post of the book world, he advises publishers, authors, and readers on proper etiquette for everything from book parties (""Feel free to build a party around a theme in a book, no matter how tacky"") and jacket photos (""You should not show off your new baby unless [your] book [is] about raising kids""), to book signings (""Just because an author has given you an autograph does not mean they want to become your pen pal"") and promotion by friends and relatives (""They should carry the book at all times on public transportation with the cover showing"").Both edifying and enjoyable, Casanova Was a Book Lover fills a Grand Canyon--sized void in the literature on literature. It is indispensable for book enthusiasts who want to know the naked truth about reading, writing, and publishing.

Long ago dubbed the fourth branch of government, the American press remains to most of the general public an inscrutable enterprise whose influence and behavior are alternately welcomed and maligned; yet the proper functioning of a democracy depends upon a media-literate populace to act as the ultimate watchdog. With wit and authority, John Hamilton and George Krimsky lead readers through the whirl of print journalism. They offer a curiosity-satisfying blend of explanation and interpretation, history, anecdotes aplenty, and statistical analysis to show what's wrong and what works with today's newspapers.