Book Review: The Reporter Who Knew Too Much: Harrison Salisbury and the New York Times, by Donald E. Davis and Eugene P. Trani

Abstract

The Reporter Who Knew Too Much: Harrison Salisbury and the New York Times. Donald E. Davis and Eugene P. Trani. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. 292 pp. $45 hbk.The Reporter Who Knew Too Much is the final installment of a trilogy on U.S.-Russian relations by two respected historians, Donald E. Davis of Illinois State University and Eugene P. Trani, retired president of Virginia Commonwealth University. The first two books dealt with the legacy of Woodrow Wilson and with the origin and impact of American images of the Soviet Union and China. In writing those volumes, the authors discovered many intersections between the histories of the two communist giants and one of America's most respected reporters, Harrison Salisbury, and decided to use his life as a lens to inspect significant public issues of the twentieth century.This creates an obvious problem with the book's direction. In trying to serve as biography and general history, it shortchanges both assignments. The reader who comes to this book looking for insights into the life of a prolific and insightful reporter likely will leave unsatisfied, as Salisbury disappears for pages at a time while the authors sketch historical background. And yet this book's broader narrative never develops the kind of momentum that was Salisbury's strength, such as his gripping history of the siege of Leningrad during World War II (in his history The 900 Days) or his reporting from the streets of Hanoi during the height of the Vietnam War (pub- lished in The New York Times and as the book Behind the Lines).In short, the book, like many produced in collaboration and with a focus on more than one subject, needs a strong editor. It often reads like a flyover view of American history that regularly mentions Salisbury, yet when it zooms in for detail, the curious result feels like overkill. Consider, for example, that a section on Salisbury's answer- ing questions from a Senate panel after his return to the United States from North Vietnam quotes or paraphrases ten senators over the course of four pages. George F. Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis, looked at a similar, contemporary subject-an American expert on relations with communist countries-and pulled off a stronger, more insightful combination of biography and history, worthy of the Pulitzer Prize it won in 2012.True, Gaddis had 800 pages to accommodate his subject, while Davis and Trani have less than 300. This restriction makes it difficult to adequately tell what needs to be told about Salisbury, one of the most influential journalists of the twentieth century. Salisbury managed the United Press bureau in London during World War II, served as The New York Times bureau chief in Moscow during the height of the Cold War (and won a Pulitzer Prize for his work there), managed to get into Hanoi during President Lyndon Johnson's bombing campaign to document the ineffectiveness of its military strategy and its civilian death toll, created the modern op-ed page, and in retirement observed the massacre in Tiananmen Square from a hotel room in Beijing. …