Odd Egg Editor

Odd-Egg Editor
© 1990 Kathryn Tucker Windham
170 pages

Anyone who grew up in Selma, Alabama, prior to 2011 had heard of Kathryn Tucker Windham, and odds were they cherished her.  A master storyteller, she inspired an annual Tale-Tellin' Festival that survives today.  Odd-Egg Editor is a brief memoir of her newspaper days, before she became a local legend.  Beginning with the Montgomery Advertiser in the 1940s,  covering the police beat,  Tucker expanded her career to land a position in Birmingham and later settled in her hometown of Selma just as the civil rights movement was warming up in the 1960s.   This memoir has a lot of little stories, with colorful characters -- a playful judge who once busied himself creating spitballs during testimony,  an inveterate escapee named Billie Jean who counted herself a friend of the cops and her regular judge-- as well as a few sadder stories.  The title of the book comes from Tucker being assigned all the odd stories at the Montgomery Advertiser, and is itself a colorful collection. One could easily read it as two decades of journalism from  mid-20th century Alabama , but I was drawn to it for the author's voice. Although she was too advanced in age to do a lot of storytelling during my youth, I heard her a time or two at Cahaba Day festivals. Even in her last years she was a volunteer at the Selma-Dallas County Library,  firmly ensconced in the town she loved and which loved her back.  I enjoyed this account of her getting started -- of overcoming prejudice against her as a young woman invading male spaces like  the cop beat and the governor's hunting camp -- very well.

Kathryn Tucker Windham, from the second-floor balcony of the Selma-Dallas County Library

Related:

NPR obituary

A Nation Challenged

A Nation Challenged: A Visual History of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
© 2002 The New York Times
240 pages

The first few anniversaries of 9/11 had a weight as they approached -- not only for what memories they evoked, but for the speculation that another attack might be attempted on the day itself.  But as the years passed, that salience eroded.  This past anniversary, in 2018, was different -- different because it was a Tuesday, an echo of the day itself.  I couldn't help but remember the shock and fear of that day, and especially of the early morning when things kept happening and we didn't know when it would stop or what might happen next. This past week, for the first time, I sat and watched extensive videos relating to 9/11 -- not  news footage, but video shot on the ground itself, after the attack or even before it,  seeing the towers both in their prime and in their demise.  In this mood I couldn't help but reading through one of the books I put on display at the library, A Nation Challenged.

In the days that followed the obscene attack on New York City in 2001, the New York Times began publishing coverage of the aftermath and its investigation in a special feature called "A Nation Challenged". This feature, an insert inside the paper,   ran until the end of the year. A Nation Challenged collects many of the photographs and articles from that run into a single collection to document the day itself,  stories of the people involved, and review the consequences of America's grief as it began a war in Afghanistan which, like a mythical hydra, spawns more conflicts the more we persist in flailing away at it.  The information included, however, is not merely text and photos; instead, there are other visual aides. A two-page spread reveals the interior of both towers,  and includes analysis of how each fell.  Another two-page spread provides a transcript of communications chatter as aviation authorities and other pilots realized that something was wrong.  Coverage of the day itself is only a part of the book, as subsequent sections review the clean-up process and the treatment of debris as a mass crime scene. Also included is information Osama bin Laden's background, and the political/ethnographic breakdown of Afghanistan.

While I've never read any other 9/11 books, this particular volume recommends itself as a remembrance.  Also, if you have time,   in late August a video was posted containing 30 minutes of restored footage shot on the day itself,  near the WTC site immediately following the collapse of tower two.  The photojournalist responsible, Mark LaGanga, spoke with people fleeing the scene, toured WTC-7 (empty save a few LEOs confirming the building was clear), and captured the collapse of WTC-1 on film.  It is unlike anything I have ever seen.

Columbine

Columbine
© 2009 Dave Cullen
417 pages

Columbine. I remember it, of course.  I was in eighth grade when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold turned their high school into a bloody spectacle. That day on April 20th, 1999, is always referred to as a school shooting, but that label misses the point. Harris and Klebold weren't shooters, they were failed bombers.  They didn't turn the cafeteria and library red with blood because they had a score to settle with the jocks, they wanted to depart a world of inferiors in a blaze of glory.  Dave Cullen's Columbine is a disturbing history of the April attack, one which draws extensively from the corpus of material the two deliberately left behind.  Cullen's history has a target, though, as he aims to rebuke not only the media for creating and perpetuating various myths about the horror, but the sheriff's department for negligence and deception.   Most importantly, Cullen maintains that Harris and Klebold were not abused loners who 'snapped', but psychologically disturbed individuals who planned the attack for more than a year.

Columbine is a receptively easy read. Cullen is a journalist, and knows how to grease the runners to captivate readers with a story. The problem is the grisly subject -- or subjects. The graphic nature of the shootings isn't dwelt on overmuch, but through Cullen's research considerable time is spent in the head of Harris and Klebold. This is, to say the least, a toxic atmosphere. Cullen's thesis is that Harris was a clinical psychopath, one who could lead a double life. In society, he could be productive and charming, convincing adults into purchasing guns on his behalf, and even dating a twenty-something despite being a kid working at a pizza parlor.   By himself -- in his journals, with people he regarded as confederates -- Eric was full of contempt for society, for virtually everyone.  He acted out his contempt in 'missions' of petty vandalism and theft,  and when confronted by authority figures, could always manipulate them into believing he was repentant.  Eric was joined in these missions by Dylan Klebold, a depressive misfit who nontheless managed to snag a prom date; both boys had active social lives.

There is no doubt that the April attack was a methodically planned horror instead of a loner's 'snap'.  Not only did the boys ramble and rave in their bloodlust for months prior, but the equipment took time to purchase and put together --  for their bombs were homemade concoctions, based on plans from the internet.  The April 20th attack itself was a multi-stage drama of the horrific: first, a diversionary bomb in the outskirts of the city to draw police away, then several massive explosions would rock the school cafeteria at peak traffic time.  Hundreds would be killed by the inferno, and as students streamed out of the exits, Eric and Dylan would be waiting for them with intent of sweeping up survivors with gunfire  before their inevitable demise at the hands of the police. Still worse, their cars, parked in areas where emergency services would establish a perimeter, were rigged to blow after their deaths, adding still more chaos and death.  This is no impulsive revenge quest, but a premeditated campaign of war against the humanity they loathed. Fortunately for the students of Columbine,  all of the bombs failed to explode. and the murderous pair soon lost interested in shooting people after the first dozen, resigning themselves to self-slaughter.

Their campaign of death should not have been an ambush. Cullen notes that Eric's sociopathy, his contempt for the world, often displayed itself in the arrogant way he and Dylan both leaked information.  Harris' toxic website often broadcast his hatred for the world,  and numerous people were aware that they had guns and were experimenting with pipe bombs. The police, having previously arrested the pair for breaking into a van and stealing equipment from it, even had a warrant for a search of Eric's house -- one which was never executed.  Although Cullen labors to dispatch many minor myths associated with the Columbine attack -- the pair's association with a 'trench coat Mafia', the sole targeting of 'jocks', etc --   he rebukes local authorities far more seriously for their negligence in following up on Harris, and for attempting to conceal how high he had already registered as a potential threat from the public.

Cullen's case is simple: Eric Harris was a psychopath who essentially co-opted the suicidal tendencies of his manic-depressive buddy into an attempt  to depart a world they loathed in a manner that demonstrated their superiority over the zombies.  Some parts of his argument are stronger than others: for instance, the numerous heavyweight bombs, which would have killed hundreds indiscriminately, indicate that the two weren't just after jocks. (The intense planning obviously belies any impulsive snap, of course.)    The case for Eric's sociopathy strikes me as solid as well. Less convincing is the utter denial that Harris and Klebold were bullied, as Cullen points to their circles of friends and the fact that Harris was a bully as well.  A bully can be bullied; the two categories are not exclusive, and Klebold strikes me as an easily-bullied sort of personality. While Harris' journals are nothing but wrath and rage, Klebold is more relatable, alternating between wrath and idolization of a girl.  Numerous students have also testified in interviews that the two were subjects of abuse -- but who in a modern high school is not?  

It is never easy to dwell on this kind of rage, and strong stomachs are definitely required to endure constant exposure to Harris' utter lack of humanity.  Cullen's interesting approach -- alternating build-up and aftermath chapters -- kept me glued to the pages, and I'm grateful for a history that indicates how Columbine attempted to climb back to its feet after the attack, to reclaim the school and honor those who perished.  Columbine's story after the fact is also difficult, though, riven with lawsuits and slow-to-heal psychological wounds. But the school survives still, and these days much has changed: police have different active-shooter protocols now (immediate engagement, no more waiting for SWAT)  threats of violence are often met with zero-tolerance policies, and it is doubtful in the post 9/11 world that teenagers could get away with leaving mysterious dufflebags in the school cafeteria, ticking away.  Although a cry for stricter gun laws follows every shooting in the United States -- understandably -- Columbine also points to the limits of those laws, as the culprits' most potentially dangerous weapons, the bombs, were fashioned from ordinary consumer goods. Thank heavens Harris had to put them together at the last minute for want of safe storage space, otherwise his serial bombing might  have succeeded.   Those with intent to harm will find a way to try it; good security policies are needed to counter these threats. At Columbine, I couldn't help but notice that the sole guard was off at lunch during the attack. One guard for 2000 students?!  My high school had two deputy sheriffs, and we couldn't have boasted a thousand students on a good day.  (Of course, we were post-Columbine.)

Columbine is haunting, effective reading.

Related:

• The Ashes of Waco, Dick Reavis. The boys' April 20th assault was allegedly timed to 'honor' Timothy McVeigh, whose own bombing was allegedly revenge for the Waco massacre. 

Lights Out

Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared
© 2015 Ted Koppell
288 pages

In Lights Out,  investigatory journalist Ted Koppel comments on the vulnerability of the United States' power grid to a cyber attack,  and reviews the way government agencies, private citizens, and other organizations are attempting to prepare for a grid-down scenario.

The story begins with the integration of the internet and the electrical grid, which allows for an efficient market but at the cost of vulnerability of outside attack. The threat doesn't come from nation-states like China and Russia, however;  although they almost certainly have hooks deep inside energy's cyber infrastructure, they have too much to lose from reprisals. Entities like North Korea and Isis have no such qualms.  The most dire attack would be one similar to that which the United States and Israel employed in Iran: a viral program introduces commands into their centrifuges which slowly undermined their functionality.  If the large power transformers which are the backbone of the electrical network are destroyed or seriously damaged,  widespread and prolonged outages would follow. Not only are these massive machines custom-built for each location, they require special rail cars for transport; replacing one would take anywhere from six months to two years.

After establishing the problem, Koppel moves to attempts a solution. Although various government agencies, including the White House, have expressed concern over the vulnerability, plans at redressing the situation are slow in coming. Washington's stance toward cyber attacks against civilian infrastructure seems motivated by a conviction that the United States can and will strike first, as though cyber shocks can be predicted.   There is a growing awareness of the problem, but response has been marginal at best. Not only  is the American government not ready to defend against a pointed cyber attack on its electrical grid, it is not ready to deal with the chaos that would ensue from widespread power outages. Without electricity,  the constant production and shuttling of goods and services would shut down completely; major cities would exhaust commercial supplies in less than days, and after that -- what social hell would follow?   FEMA's plans seem to involve evacuating major cities like New York, but to what end?  Keeping supplies for that many people is problematic, considering that if there's no emergency, the supplies simply go to waste. The agency is far more prepared for regional disasters than it was after 2005's Katrina, but that's a fairly low bar.

 In the last third of the book, Koppel examines communities like the Mormons and the prepping community which steel themselves for emergencies. The Mormons are motivated by a series of nasty altercations -- small-scale wars, even -- between themselves and state militias in the 19th century, but their entire church structure seems engineered for resilience.  Likewise impressive are rural communities in Wyoming, who acknowledge that in the event of a grid-down scenario, they would be left to their own devices while D.C. prioritizes places like New York City. People in sparsely-settled states like Wyoming are more kin to their pioneer forebears  than they are the naked urbanite, who is at the mercy of complex systems working as planned.

Lights Out is a most interesting book, with at least three subject areas: energy, cyberwar, and emergency preparation.  Given Koppel's name recognition, I could see this book as one introducing a lot of citizens to the general idea of cyber attacks, or even the importance of electric infrastructure -- subjects that few people would be willing to pick up a book about.   It's not exactly complete --  Koppel doesn't mention, for instance, that there are three grids in North America, so damage wouldn't necessarily be continent-wide. (The three grids are the eastern seaboard, the western seaboard, and Texas. The publisher's cover actually hints at the segmentation, though) It succeeds at isolating the key points about abstract systems and distilling them into a warning, however.


Related:
Cyber War, Richard Clarke. Clarke is quoted extensively.

Ninety Percent of Everything

Ninety Percent of Everything:  Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate.
© 2013 Rose George
287 pages

UK Title: Deep Sea and Foreign Going: Inside Shipping [...]

What is 1300 feet long, travels the distance to the Moon nearly annually, and is nigh-invisible? The answer is any container ship, fleets of which convey the overwhelming majority of all goods traded between cities and continents, but which most people never think about.  This may be so because so few people work in modern sea-shipping, or because in the age of terrorism ports are severed from the cities they serve, blocked away by miles of walls and checkpoints.  In Ninety Percent of Everything, journalist Helen George spends several months aboard a ship owned by Maersk, a Danish commercial giant,  meeting the men and women who keep the fleets float in an effort to understand their experience and the importance of the shipping enterprise in the 21st century.

Like the containers the ships are filled with, Ninety Percent is a glorious grab-bag of topics; a little history, a little science, a little travel, a little military action on the high seas.  The Maersk Kendal, George's home for most of the trip, is lead by Captain Glenn, a man who lived through the revolution in shipping that followed "the Box", or the advent of containerization. Once a young seaman on a tramp steamer that moved from port to port, picking up small articles,  he witnessed the death of old harbors that were closed to make room for the far larger equipment needed to handle the containers. He is a romantic figure who can navigate the seven seas on a sextant alone, even if the march of time has forced him to spend his days a wheelhouse that resembles a computer lab.  Steaming from city to city, through monsoons and canals, ships like his can arrive in a harbor and completely turn over hundreds or thousands of containers in less than 24 hours  before departing into the night. 

The seamen's experience remains as it has for thousands of years -- lonely, dangerous, and often boring.  The views from the ship are of nothing but a long expanse of boxes piled another, and the work is similarly dull for most,  constantly cleaning and painting the ship, or tending the house-sized engine.  Most sailors come from developing countries the world over, and especially from the Philippines since their ability to speak English is prized. Dismal and unnoted as the work is, like most jobs it's better than starving. As the captain of the Kendal laments, even today when the fast container ships have reduced the globe from the world to a village, their crews are treated like the 'mere scum of the earth'.  Ms. George  also includes a segment spent on a military vessel hunting Somalian pirates (taking a decidedly unromantic attitude towards the sea-going thugs who are the object of so much fascination by the western press), and visits a portside organization that does its best to ameliorate the condition of the sailors, offering them counseling and sending them goods from home.  Although the book concerns modern shipping, George keeps it grounded in history as she can, retelling the story of World War 2's merchant marine sailors who endured the same danger for the same purpose as the Navy, but with little honor or compensation rendered.  One positive aspect of the sailors' experience is their time spent in the company of the sea's abundance of life, especially dolphins 

Ninety Percent of Everything succeeds in going aboard the massive machine that is a container ship and giving its lifeless expanse of hull and rows of containers a human face;  for all the automation, the sealanes still remain the province of sailors who have brain enough to engineer solutions against fickle winds and waves. While George doesn't spend a great deal of time about the mechanics of shipping (nor should she, seeing how that territory was well done in The Box),  her account of the human side makes for fantastic reading. Her Yorkshire ancestors would surely be pleased. 

Confederates in the Attic

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
© 1999 Tony Hortwitz
432 pages

          For most of the United States, the Civil War is like any other entry in the history books, of interest but not very consequential. . For the South, however, the war was and is a conflict that left deep scars across its fabric. Long after the surrender of the Confederacy, its flag still flies from countless homes throughout the region; old arguments and symbols continue to be reinterpreted and invigorated through new arguments. In Confederates In the Attic, Tony Horwitz builds on his lifelong interest in the Civil War to take an extensive tour through the old Confederacy.  Spanning at least three years, his visits take him from the study of Shelby Foote to the trenches of the Antietam battlefield,  sojourning with ‘hard core’ reenactors.  He visits with the not-quite-so-obsessed, as well, citizens black and white, about the lingering legacy of the Civil War. The result is a triumph, a book entertaining to read, and balanced to book, providing both laughs, reflections, and twinges in spades.

          Confederates is essentially a travel diary with meaning; as Howitz moves through the south, he attempts to absorb the experiences of the war through its museums and battlefields, as well as the attitudes of the people who live with this history. Most of the people recorded tend toward the eccentric, like the aforementioned ‘hardcore’ reenactors who purposely march for days on blistered feed scarfing hardtack and staining their woolen uniforms to go for the ‘authentic’ look. There are more moderate voices, like that of Shelby Foote, who illustrate why the Civil War remains so visceral for southerners, especially whites. In an era of tumultuous social and political change – when jobs vanish, cities are destroyed,  and families riven apart --  the glory days of the Old South, and its Confederacy, are something to hold on to. They symbolize resistance to change, defiance of pushy outsiders. The Civil War, in storied memory, was an age of flamboyant heroes defying the odds in style.  The Confederacy’s dramatic attempt at defending its autonomy serves as a source of inspiration to working class guys being antagonized by their bosses or ‘the system’; on a larger level it inspires libertarians and conservatives who wish to keep the Federal government within certain constitutional limits.

          For all the remembrance, however, the Civil War was not a feud fought on principle between gentlemen over ‘rights’. It was an economic battle, the doubly misguided defense of slavery by the planters and their armies against the armies of the north. That slavery, based on race, continues to enslave the minds of black and white southerners alike. Although many of Horwitz’s experience tend toward the humorous, there are dark passages here.  Strife between the black and white people of the nation continues, driven by ignorance and the time-honored custom of one generation poisoning another with learned hatred.  In one chapter, Horwitz visits a town that saw a murder when a carload of young black men gave chase to a truck flying the rebel flag and fired shots into the truck, killing him. When interviewed, the chief suspect said he knew little about the Civil War, only that he’d been told that flag was flown by whites to antagonize blacks.  Before moving to the South, he said, he only knew it as the Dukes of Hazzard flag.  Where poorer whites are acculturated to see the Confederate flag as a symbol of self-defense, blacks are raised to see it as a symbol of antagonism. People continue to fight over the meaning, and literally, as Horwitz sees a school coalescing into two race-gangs wearing shirts to provoke the other into fistfights. It is tragic, and if the ethnic brawling in the Balkans and the middle east are any indicator,  the tragedy may continue for centuries hence.

          Although Horwitz is a self-professed Yankee, and his account takes tragic turns, as a southern reader I found it fair. Of course, most southerners are not as extreme as the ones the author mentions; I know of no one who submits their children to learning a Southern Catechism, like the Sons and Daughters of Confederate Veterans do in one chapter, so readers living in the south might object to the slightly exaggerated take of most of his subjects. Racial tension exists throughout the nation, not simply in the South, and the battle flag’s symbolic power is appreciated or despaired over likewise across the United States.  But even the craziest of characters in Confederates in the Attic is treated with respect;  Horwitz never breezes by anyone; they receive extensive time to tell their story, and they do. Horwitz is perfectly respectful of the issues at hand’s complexity, and his work is a standout.

No Logo

No Logo: the Case Against the Brand Bullies 

© 1999, 2009; Naomi Klein

544 pages

The political and financial turmoil of the past few years have seen a rising tide of anger targeted against the political power of wealthy corporations. Little wonder: since the crisis erupted in 2007, millions have lost their jobs, yet the corporate officers of these failing businesses continue to award themselves extravagant bonuses, in some cases with taxpayers' money.  And there is no help to be found in the government;  anti-corporate protesters in New York and elsewhere have been set on by police, and the Supreme Court has declared corporations to be "people", whose freedom of speech in the form of campaign donations should not be limited in the least. (And those actual people who express their own freedom of speech by impeding corporate actions? If their protests are judged to have caused $10,000 in losses, they are deemed domestic terrorists and join the 10% of Americans already in prison.) No Brand  is a sharp criticism of corporations, but one from a different era. First published in 1999, she scrutinizes brand corporations first for their business model, which emphasizes style rather than substance, before examining their invasion of public space and notorious legacy of abusive labor practices.

As a child, I scoffed at my classmates’ obsession with the Nike brand. My derision was born not of any preternatural consumer consciousness; my parents simply were not the kind to pay for overpriced t-shirts. For that is what they were; a Nike t-shirt is not made of magic cotton that repels water, heals wounds, or bestows upon its wearer +2 Armor. The same is true of its synthetic products, aimed toward actual athletes: while they may wick sweat and keep users comfortable, they do it no better than those manufactured by Champion or generic brands. Nike has never advertised its gear on the basis of superiority, like washing detergent. And yet early this spring, when shopping for athletic clothes, I went to Amazon and simply typed in “Nike”. I was interested in all manner of sports apparel, and Nike…was sports.

Therein lies the basis of Klein’s criticism.  Brand companies aren’t about quality, they’re about Ideas, and consumers are not paying money for superior merchandise but are instead buying into an image of themselves, of something they want to be. It’s a formula that has given religions and political ideologies success for thousands of years, and today it is the approach of almost every major corporation. But because their products don’t advertise themselves the way quality products might, these brand corporations have to push their product aggressively, and in the section “NO SPACE”, Klein details how brands are using not just conventional media, but putting up advertisements in schools. While parents might merely resent a company taking advantage of a financially struggling school system to hawk its shoes,  this branded invasion is literally dangerous when school cafeterias become hosts to McDonalds annexes and Coca-Cola gains exclusive distribution rights. Children become a captive audience to advertising; their values are those introduced not by parents or concerned teachers, but marketing execs who are grooming the next generation of consumers.

 Because the companies chiefly concern themselves with pushing their Image, and give little attention to the manufacturing side of things, rampant labor abuses escape their notice completely. The abuses are familiar to anyone conversant with the term sweat shop:  long hours, marginal pay, no rights, and no tolerance for anyone who resists the abuse. Even in countries which have something resembling human rights laws, they are often moot where corporations are concerned. In the Philippines, for instance, there exist economic development zones, little islands of virtually zero regulation where the only rules governing corporations are those they impose upon themselves. Shockingly, with their only motivation being profit margins, exploitation is rife.

But in the United States and Europe, citizens’ groups are working to give these companies another motivation. In “NO LOGO”, Klein covers the growth of activism against these companies, showing how boycotts and government actions have forced Nike and other companies to take responsibility for the labor costs involved in their products. This activism isn’t limited to aging hippies or idealistic college students, either: certain groups have met success in stirring up anger in decaying urban areas, among young black men who dream of making a success of themselves by wearing Nike shoes.

 No Logo is as mature a critique of brand corporations as one might ask for – sharply pointed, but not a screed. She builds her arguments up slowly and steadily, allowing the facts to present the case instead of passion.  The result is disturbing and damning, yet encouraging. Definitely a work to remember. (For those who have read the original, Klein updates it with a section that declares President Obama to be the first superbrand president...with the problems therein.)

Reporter

Reporter: Covering Civil Rights...and Wrongs in Dixie
© 2006 Alvin Benn
388 pages

When a young Alvin Benn left the Marine Corps to beome a civilian editor working with United Press International,  he was asked by UPC's vice president where he wanted to work, "Where the action is," Benn replied, and so they sent him to Birmingham, Alabama, during the most violent years of the Civil Rights movement. Months after his arrival in the Deep South, Benn covered a Ku Klux Klan rally, where his tires were slashed and he and his fellow reporters tailed by a carload of Kluckers. Benn got the action he wante -- and perhaps more than he bargained for, then and throughout his life as a journalist. Reporter is a part-biography and part-journalistic history of Benn's decades of coverage as a reporter, editor, and one-time publisher; coverage for which he recently won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alabama Press Association.



Although Benn wrote it to capture his memories for his family, this collection of yarns should be of interest of anyone from the Alabama area, especially those living in Selma. While Benn has moved all over the state -- covered in a section called 'Newspaper Nomads' -- the last few decades have been spent  in the city where King and his marchers began their journey to Montgomery to fight for equal rights.The turbulent period of the Civil Rights movement still marks Selma, as many of its most prominent personalities (especially the colorful characters Benn delighted most in recovering) were shaped by those events and still count them as influences as they attempt to lead Selma into the 21st century -- or keep it stuck in the 1960s, varying. Among the people Benn profiles is famed mayor "Joe T." Smitherman, who ran Selma for 35 years, finally losing a mayoral election in 2000. Smitherman is remarkable in Benn's eyes for rising from a working class background to effectively ruling a city, without a college background and armed only with an uncanny ability to get what he wanted done accomplished.

There's no doubt that Benn knows how to tell a story, although the organization of this work was a bit questionable. He opens up with his introduction to journalism and then provides an overview of his career before returning to his childhood and his life in the Marines. After leading the reader back to his start as a reporter, Benn then shares the most memorable stories of his career; these constitute the bulk of the book.  This format does have the benefit of leaping into the action and then giving readers context for the stories that follow, but I was left feeling that this is a book composed of three sections that don't flow as well as they should. The liveliness of the writing more than makes up for this, though. Whoever chose the pictures for this volume did a great job; there's an especially fun one of Benn -- who is a Jewish reporter -- standing behind a poster that exhorts people to beware the lies of the evil Jewish media.  I've heard a few of these stories in person, and given his wicked sense of humor I wouldn't be surprised if Benn set up that shot on purpose.