Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie

February 15, 2021
How four of the most important women journalists of the past five decades ended up together at the then-fledgling National Public Radio. In this natural follow-up to Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News (2020), Napoli narrates the origin stories of NPR's female journalistic superheroes: Susan Stamberg and Linda Wertheimer, who launched the network's groundbreaking, signature show All Things Considered; preeminent legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, an expert on the Supreme Court; and pioneering political journalist Cokie Roberts. Though their early paths differed, they joined forces at NPR, overqualified and underpaid due to the widespread gender discrimination of the day. At the time, writes the author, "there were no jobs for women or the company already 'had its woman.'...Even women with degrees from elite schools, it seemed, attended secretarial courses after graduation in order to equip themselves for the working world." The quartet banded together (their area of the newsroom was nicknamed the "Fallopian Jungle") to push for change for women and minorities. "Regarding hiring and union matters and management issues," writes Napoli, "they did not hold back....They weren't women in power--though, had they wished, they could likely have seized it--they were women of power." Though they sound like journalism's Justice League, the author doesn't provide adequate documentation of them springing into action together, and she dwells more on their struggles than their successes. She wraps up the primary narrative with NPR's near bankruptcy in the 1980s even though the "founding mothers" had little to do with either causing or solving the network's financial woes. In a history filled with so many powerful moments and fascinating details about journalism, perseverance, and gender bias, Napoli could have chosen a higher note for her conclusion. A flawed yet well-researched deep dive into the careers of the journalists who helped make NPR a household name.

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April 1, 2021

Journalist and author Napoli (Up All Night) weaves a fascinating, highly readable account of the women of National Public Radio. Written to coincide with the 50th anniversary of NPR's launch, this book is however much more than the group biography its title proclaims it to be. Veteran and pioneering journalists Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg, and Cokie Roberts are the central players in the narrative, but this book also presents a nostalgic retrospective of the major political, social, and cultural events that helped shape that alternative media. While telling the story of both NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Napoli traces the career paths of these four women against the backdrop of key historical events: the civil rights movement, the idealism of the Great Society, the emergence of Ms. magazine, and the heady days of feminist activism. Readers are left with inspiring insights into the pathbreaking work of these four women, but more importantly with a sense of how the status of some women and the role of the media have both changed in the last 50 years. VERDICT Readers interested in feminism, women's history, and biography will be rewarded with a great story that deserves to be widely known.--Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2021
Napoli's fascination with public radio reaches back to the start of her journalism career and shaped two of her three previous books, Radio Shangri-La (2011) and Ray & Joan (2016). She now brings all her biographical and expository skills, along with her passion for reporting and fluency in the social, political, and financial challenges facing the press, to this vivid and engrossing group biography of the women who built National Public Radio. As she tells the very different, ultimately converging life stories of ace journalists and innovative broadcasters Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg, and the late Cokie Roberts, all born between 1938 and 1944, Napoli also tracks the battle for women's equality in newsrooms and the air-waves-for-the-people vision and legislation behind the establishment of NPR in 1970. Napoli revels in the powerful personalities and talents of the founding mothers as she chronicles how each confronted misogyny, juggled personal lives and demanding careers, and established enormously influential cultural, legal, and political beats. Along the way, Napoli tells the instructive story of NPR's growth, from a shoestring operation to an inspired but nearly bankrupt juggernaut to today's avidly supported media jewel. NPR fans will find every detail compelling, while readers interested in media will discover a new and essential facet of broadcast history.

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