1 comments about The Right Place at the Right Time.

1. "The Right Place At The Right Time" is an excellent professional memoir that has the merit of being both entertaining and informative. From his early days of working as a sub-editor for the Reuters international news service in London, to the pioneering way he later helped to break the mold of network television's pack journalism, Robert MacNeil tells wonderful stories from one of the most interesting periods of the 20th century.

   MacNeil was there when the Belgian Congo was granted its independence and--like many developing African nations unprepared for the end of colonial rule--fell into tribal feuds and warfare. He reported from the front lines of the Cold War in Berlin as the Wall was being built, and was in Cuba during the missile crisis. He was there at the assassination of President Kennedy and (in all probability) even met Lee Harvey Oswald just minutes after the shooting. MacNeil covered the 1964 presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson, fought the Nixon Administration to prevent the federal government from interfering with freedom of the press on public television, and ultimately gave up a comfortable job with the BBC to launch what would later become the "MacNeil/Lehrer Report."

   During the most turbulent years of the 1960s, it is clear that MacNeil was haunted by the escalating body count of the Vietnam War, and his disillusion with the conflict in Southeast Asia runs throughout this book like a subtext that puts many of the breaking news events into a sort of special perspective. For a man who has interviewed everyone from Charlie Chaplin to the Ayatollah Khomeini (before the fundamentalist revolution in Iran), it is remarkable how his focus keeps returning to the Vietnam War and what it did to America at home and overseas.

   Accordingly, "The Right Place At The Right Time" is full of colorful, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, stories about the people touched by events beyond their control. MacNeil has a keen eye for how the broadcasting business can illuminate or distort the facts of a particular case, and he goes to considerable effort not to let his work slip into the cliche of stale formula punditry. For the most part, he succeeds. His criticism of modern television news as being obsessed with style over substance is especially devastating. He demonstrates a respect for the intelligence of his viewers that seems rare among the media today.

   If MacNeil's book has a fault, it is that the author never ventures into the realm of a true autobiography. The man himself is something of a cipher. While it is admirable that he has not indulged in the type of confessional, introspective New Journalism that is so fashionable and trendy among writers now, MacNeil is so reserved about protecting his privacy that he says more about one of his old grade-school teachers than he does about his family. Even Walter Cronkite's recent autobiography told the reader more about his wife and children than MacNeil does at any point in this account. After a while, it tends to deprive him of a human dimension. You learn something of his political leanings (liberal), for example, but he never includes more than a passing reference to any part of his domestic life, and that makes him come across as rather bloodless and remote.

   Nevertheless, that small quibble aside, "The Right Place At The Right Time" is one of those few books that really does have something important to say, and does so with grace and wit to spare. The short chapters fly by quickly. And when you reach the end, you may even realize that MacNeil has not only provided food for thought, but also left you looking at the broadcasting industry in ways that you haven't before.

No comments about As Many Liars: The Story Of The 1995 Manitoba Vote-Splitting Scandal.

No comments about Take One's Essential Guide to Canadian Film.

No comments about The Home Place: Life in Rural Prince Edward Island in the 1920s and 30s.

No comments about Radisson & des Groseilliers: Fur Traders of the North (In the Footsteps of Explorers).

No comments about British Women and the Spanish Civil War (Routledge/Canada Blanch Studies in Contemporary Spain).

No comments about On the Edge of Greatness: The Diaries of John Humphrey, First Director of the United Nations Human Rights Division, Vol I 1948-1949.

1 comments about The Price of Command: A Biography of General Guy Simonds.

1. He led Canada through the bloodiest war it had ever been through and came out of it and honoured hero. He truly was a great Canadian.

3 comments about So Obstinately Loyal: James Moody, 1744-1809.

1. This is a very readable scholarly book about Captain James Moody of New Jersey. A man denounced by Washington ( he regularly swiped his mail) and all but forgotten in the parts of Nova Scotia where he was essential in civil development. Being a descendent of his compatriot, Lawrence Marr, I have an axe to grind, but if you have seen the movie "The Patriot" and find yourself distressed at the actions of the Loyalists in America, you owe it to yourself to read this. Moody, being aware of the usages of war at the time, was careful to wear his uniform and carry his commission on his adventures in the Delaware Gap area. His escapes were legendary and he became the subject of children's tales to the "patriot" third that remained behind when he and compatriots fled New York at the end of the Revolution. The first chapters reveal the situation at the beginning of the Revolution and the social web of the time. It is easy to understand his actions given the treatment of his in-laws and associates by the radicals, and one might suspect an element of class warfare motivated acts against the wealthy farmer class to which Moody, the Brittains, and the Marr families belonged. The later half of the book deals with his attempts to acquire a loyalist pension and his role in establishing a community in Nova Scotia. As such, the book is a valuable addition to the "Loyalist Studies" program of Canada's scholars. Nonetheless, it is also of great value to those of us in the States. It demonstrates the complex situation at the time of the Revolution with son against father, brother against brother. As one reads about denunciations and persecutions, one learns not only that "It could happen here" but that "It has happened here."



2. This is the first book I have read which describes the American revolutionaries unsympathetically. At one point, I thought the book must have been written during the current conflict in Iraq, but the copyright is dated 2000. I guess those who fight against authority have something in common with each other.
   
   I did not find this book exciting to read. Perhaps the author is trying to be authoritative at the price of being dull. Altogether, I suggest it's a great book to have read, not such a great book to read.



3. One cannot have a rounded view of the American revolution without seeing the extent to which it was also a civil war, and understanding the viewpoint of those in America who shared in the resentment of King George's policies, yet renounced violence as a remedy and saw no need to overthrow the existing rule of law. Susan Shenstone's thoroughly researched and detailed study of James Moody does precisely that. It is I believe at least as important for an American audience as for a Canadian one.

No comments about Jacques Cartier: Navigating the St. Lawrence River (Library of Explorers and Exploration).