Assignment Russia: Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War - Hardcover

by Marvin Kalb (Author)

A personal journey through some of the darkest moments of the cold war and the early days of television news
Marvin Kalb, the award-winning journalist who has written extensively about the world he reported on during his long career, now turns his eye on the young man who became that journalist. Chosen by legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow to become one of what came to be known as the Murrow Boys, Kalb in this newest volume of his memoirs takes readers back to his first days as a journalist, and what also were the first days of broadcast news.
Kalb captures the excitement of being present at the creation of a whole new way of bringing news immediately to the public. And what news. Cold War tensions were high between Eisenhower's America and Khrushchev's Soviet Union. Kalb is at the center, occupying a unique spot as a student of Russia tasked with explaining Moscow to Washington and the American public. He joins a cast of legendary figures along the way, from Murrow himself to Eric Severeid, Howard K. Smith, Richard Hottelet, Charles Kuralt, and Daniel Schorr among many others. He finds himself assigned as Moscow correspondent of CBS News just as the U2 incident--the downing of a US spy plane over Russian territory--is unfolding.
As readers of his first volume, The Year I Was Peter the Great, will recall, being the right person, in the right place, at the right time found Kalb face to face with Khrushchev. Assignment Russia sees Kalb once again an eyewitness to history--and a writer and analyst who has helped shape the first draft of that history.
Kalb witnessed and interpreted many of the defining events of the Cold War. In Assignment Russia he ultimately finds himself assigned as Moscow correspondent for CBS News just as the U-2 incident--the downing of a U.S. spy plane over Russianterritory--is unfolding. Kalb brings alive once again the tension that surrounded that event, and the reportorial skills deployed to illuminate it.
Like The Year I Was Peter the Great, the first volume in a series of memoirs narrating his earlier life, Assignment Russia brings us Kalb once again as an eyewitness to history--and a writer and analyst who has helped shape the first draft of that history.

Front Jacket

"Marvin Kalb is a great storyteller with a great story to tell."--Dan Rather

The chilliest years of the Cold War marked the entrance of a young man who would go on to become one of America's preeminent diplomatic correspondents. Handpicked by the legendary Edward R. Murrow to join the ranks of an esteemed news network that was just beginning to enter a new world of televised news broadcasting, Marvin Kalb takes readers back to his first days as a journalist, and what also were the first days of broadcast news.

The world in the late 1950s was a tense geopolitical drama of Eisenhower's America, Khrushchev's Russia, and Mao's China. Mistrust and strategic calculation governed international relations. Kalb, who had left his graduate work in Russian studies at Harvard at Murrow's call for him to join the ranks of CBS News, brought a scholar's appreciation for history and objective research to his new role as a journalist who explained and explored this new postwar world.

It was also a new world of journalism, brought by camera into viewers' homes. The difficulties of conveying news not only by image but by word--and doing so on deadline, with minimal resources, and in a hostile environment--are alive in Kalb's engaged and vivid writing. He calls his book a "long letter home" and Assignment Russia reads with that kind of color and honesty.

Kalb joins a cast of legendary figures in telling this story of the early days of the Cold War and broadcast news, from Murrow to Eric Severeid, Howard K. Smith, Richard Hottelet, Charles Kuralt, and Daniel Schorr, among many others--men like himself who became household names and trusted guides to a tension-filled world.

Author Biography

Marvin Kalb is a former senior adviser to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a Harvard Professor emeritus, former network news correspondent at NBC and CBS, senior fellow nonresident at the Brookings Institution, and author of 16 other books, the most recent of which is the first volume of his memoirs, The Year I Was Peter the Great (Brookings).