Book Review: Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee

Abstract

Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee. JeffHimmelman. New York, NY: Random House, 2012. 512 pp. $27 hbk.Whether readers appreciate Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee will depend upon their answers to at least two questions: (1) Do they want to know more than is in Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee's own autobiography A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures? and (2) Is the author-subject relationship of primary, secondary, or no importance at all?Jeff Himmelman's self-deprecating style and his admiration for his sources (Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, Katharine Graham, Sally Quinn, and Bob Woodward) may engage some readers and alienate others. However, his book complements Bradlee's A Good Life and Graham's Personal History and provides fascinating compressed narratives absent from either autobiography.Descriptions of Bradlee throughout the book-all editorial flint and casual cool-confirm that Himmelman, a journalist, author, and musician, likes and admires his source. as Bradlee himself could not resolve the conflict between being a journalist and a friend when he wrote Conversations with Kennedy, Himmelman, too, struggles to walk his own fine line. When Woodward tells the author, All biographers are concealers, it is clear that Himmelman understands the nuances in the statement.Bradlee discounts his relationship with JFK-I was a newspaper person first and foremost because if I'd been less of a newspaperman, I would have been more of a friend-but Himmelman is devoted to Bradlee and appreciates the time and access that Bradlee allowed him. Himmelman enjoyed the use of Bradlee's extensive archives, which include more than sixty boxes of memos, notes, personal letters, photographs, and transcribed interviews and met regularly with Bradlee and with many Bradlee family members and acquaintances:Over the course of the next three years, Ben opened his entire life to me, from his archives at The Washington Post to his friends, his colleagues, and his dinner table. We've shared birthdays and howled in pained unison at the television screen during Redskins games. We have conducted dozens of formal interviews in Ben's office and untold hundreds of casual ones over the dinner dishes, or in lounge chairs by the pool. My wife is in love with him. We're friends.However, for all readers-no matter what their perspective on the proper relationship between a journalist and a source-there are treasures around every bend. Himmelman looks closely into Janet Cooke's Jimmy's World scandal; the relationships that develop among Bradlee, his second wife Antoinette (Tony) Bradlee, JFK, and Jacqueline Kennedy; and previously hidden concerns about the reliability of sources- including Deep Throat-during the Watergate years.These treasures include descriptions of special moments between friends and the value of seemingly inconsequential items, such as a birthday invitation and a photograph. For example, Himmelman describes Ben and Tony Bradlee as they approach the Kennedys' front door to congratulate JFK on his successful run for the White House: Just the four of them, having dinner, taking in a movie, sharing a celebratory bottle of champagne. What a moment in life, in anyone's life, to watch the key turn in the lock and the door swing open, to see history in such personal terms.Himmelman also conveys a certain pathos and wistfulness throughout the biography, as he describes unexpected discoveries. While wading through stacks of paper, Himmelman finds an invitation to a birthday celebration for John Kennedy Jr. at the White House. About to set it aside, he notes the date: November 26, 1963. He writes,In a flash I realized that it was an invitation to a party that never happened, planned as it was for four days after Kennedy's death. I had to stop working and just sit with it for a while. Ben wrote a book about Kennedy, and has answered countless questions about him in countless interviews since 1963. …