An Especially Good View
Watching History Happen
Published on 15. July 2021
400 pages
978-1-7359968-2-0 (ISBN)
Description
In more than five decades as a reporter, editor and publisher, Peter Osnos has had an especially good view of momentous events and relationships with some of the most influential personalities of our time.
As a young journalist for I.F. Stone's Weekly, one of the leading publications of the turbulent 1960s and in 18 years at The Washington Post , he covered the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, the Soviet Union at the height of Kremlin power, Washington D.C. as National Editor, "Swinging London" in the 60s and Thatcher's Britain in the 1980s.
At Random House and the company he founded, PublicAffairs, he was responsible for books by four presidents -Carter, Clinton, Obama and Trump; celebrated Washington figures including Robert McNamara, House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Vernon Jordan, first ladies Rosalynn Carter and Nancy Reagan, the billionaire George Soros, basketball superstars Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Magic Johnson, legendary spies, political dissidents and the writers, Molly Ivins and Peggy Noonan, among many others.
In this unusually wide-ranging memoir, Osnos uses a reporter's skills to portray historic events and encounters beginning with his parents' extraordinary World War II experiences escaping Europe to India, where he was born, to the present day. He shares unique portraits of the famous people he worked with and an insider's perspective of the news and publishing businesses. As he charts the evolution of his career and recent history, he also explores the influence and impact of family, character, curiosity, luck, resilience, a well-pressed suit and some unexpected wrinkles.
Also featuring a "virtual attic" of photographs, documents and video at anespeciallygoodview.com.
As a young journalist for I.F. Stone's Weekly, one of the leading publications of the turbulent 1960s and in 18 years at The Washington Post , he covered the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, the Soviet Union at the height of Kremlin power, Washington D.C. as National Editor, "Swinging London" in the 60s and Thatcher's Britain in the 1980s.
At Random House and the company he founded, PublicAffairs, he was responsible for books by four presidents -Carter, Clinton, Obama and Trump; celebrated Washington figures including Robert McNamara, House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Vernon Jordan, first ladies Rosalynn Carter and Nancy Reagan, the billionaire George Soros, basketball superstars Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Magic Johnson, legendary spies, political dissidents and the writers, Molly Ivins and Peggy Noonan, among many others.
In this unusually wide-ranging memoir, Osnos uses a reporter's skills to portray historic events and encounters beginning with his parents' extraordinary World War II experiences escaping Europe to India, where he was born, to the present day. He shares unique portraits of the famous people he worked with and an insider's perspective of the news and publishing businesses. As he charts the evolution of his career and recent history, he also explores the influence and impact of family, character, curiosity, luck, resilience, a well-pressed suit and some unexpected wrinkles.
Also featuring a "virtual attic" of photographs, documents and video at anespeciallygoodview.com.
More details
Person
Peter L.W. Osnos was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) India on October 13, 1943. He arrived in Los Angeles by ship with his parents and brother in February 1944. He was raised in New York and attended high school in Connecticut, college at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and graduate school at Columbia University. He worked as an assistant to the journalist I.F. Stone and joined the Washington Post in 1966. At the Post, Osnos served as a correspondent in Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and London. He was also the national and foreign editor. In 1984, Osnos joined Random House as a senior editor and later associate publisher as well as publisher of the Times Books imprint. In 1997, he founded PublicAffairs in partnership with the Perseus Books Group and served as publisher and editor at large until 2020. He was the founder of the Caravan Project on the development of digital and audio publishing, author of a weekly media column called Platform which was hosted by the Century Foundation and appeared on theatlantic.com and in 2020, launched Platform Books LLC with his wife, Susan Sherer Osnos.
The first book will be "An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen" to be released in June, 2021. It is Osnos' memoir to be distributed by Two Rivers/Ingram. He is the father of two children, Evan Osnos and Katherine Sanford, and grandfather of five. He and his wife now live in New York City and Lakeside, Michigan.
The first book will be "An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen" to be released in June, 2021. It is Osnos' memoir to be distributed by Two Rivers/Ingram. He is the father of two children, Evan Osnos and Katherine Sanford, and grandfather of five. He and his wife now live in New York City and Lakeside, Michigan.
Content
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Prologue: Who, What, When, Where, Why
- Part One Passages
- 1-Caste: Polish
- 2-The Belnord
- 3-Founded in 1794
- 4-The Harvard of the Jews
- 5-The J School
- 6-Izzy
- Part Two Words, War, and Autocracy
- 7-Swinging London
- 8-Metro
- 9-Vietnam
- 10-Echoes of Vietnam
- 11-The Gap Years
- 12-Kutuzovsky 7/4
- 13-An Astonishing Cast of Russians
- 14-Thornapple
- 15-The Brits
- Part Three Books and Books
- 16-The Eleventh Floor
- 17-Breaking Through
- 18-The Art of the Deal
- 19-Bill and Barack
- 20-Mr. Clifford and Mr. Jordan
- 21-Superstar
- 22-It Takes All Kinds
- 23-The Talmud
- 24-Puzzles and the Endgame
- Part Four Shopkeeper
- 25-One Word, Cap A
- 26-No Longer a Startup, Not Yet an Antitrust Case
- 27-The Caravan Moves On
- 28-Pearl Dive
- Part Five Reflections
- 29-Wrinkles
- 30-Families, Communities, and Work
- 31-Time Present and Time Past
- A Virtual Attic
- Acknowledgments
