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A.M. Spencer, �Murrow: His Life and Times�

Started September 9 � Finished October 1, 2003; 838 pages. Posted 24 October 2003

This book is bigger than Atlas Shrugged.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn�t have picked up this biography. It�s just too big. Dopey people say, �Woah! Too much information!� for things all the time, but that�s actually what I thought when I saw this book.

It�s three inches thick for crying out loud! That�s too much information!

But, as it happened somebody tried to sell the bookstore this book, we passed on it (we already had two copies, and it obviously takes a lot of space that could be used for Hunter S. Thompson in our media section).

The guy left it behind. This was before I started this reading project, and while I didn�t want to pay for it, I decided I wouldn�t mind reading it myself, even if it was as big as my fist. After all, I still remember reading a Daredevil comic and seeing reporter Ben Urich say, �I started smoking Camels because that�s what Edward Murrow smoked.� I started smoking Camels, �cause that�s what Ben Urich smoked.

But I put it off for at least three years. Too much information, I kept saying to myself. But finally, as I was headed to Hawaii, I figured it would make some seriously needed room on my to read non-fiction shelf. It took three weeks to finish, and you know why?

Because there is too much information.

You think I�m kidding.

I�m not kidding.

I now know what Murrow ordered in fine restaurants. That�s how much detail is put into this biography.

You think I�m being sarcastic.

He ordered scrambled eggs because one, he smoked so much that he couldn�t really taste anything, and two, because he liked to annoy the waiters in these fine restaurants.

To anybody who knows the Murrow legacy, the section on Joe McCarthy is the most interesting. Unfortunately, this covers about 100 pages of an almost 900 page book. For the rest of the time, we as readers are given too much information — information about his life on a farm, information on how he came to England and managed to be a successful war reporter, information about how he smoked a shitload of Camel cigarettes.

And by the time you finish the final pages detailing his battle with lung cancer, you realize Murrow wasn�t really that interesting after all.

But my mom will like the fact that I didn�t smoke at all while I was typing this.


Rating: Worth using as the leg on your broken couch. Make sure you have a couch that sits very high off the floor.

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