cover image This Is Today: A Window on Our Times

This Is Today: A Window on Our Times

Eric Mink. Andrews McMeel Publishing, $34.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-7407-3853-1

Although bizarrely non-chronological, this work does recount, in simple terms, some of the most important historical events of the past 50-odd years, with an emphasis on human interest stories. Covering events, politics,""life issues"" and culture, the book is laid out with a modern, vaguely arty feel. Color photos rule (many of them stills from the Today show), with paragraphs of text and all-caps pullout quotes interspersed between them. Mink, a New York Daily News staffer, shows how Today treated each subject, from the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald (Tom Pettit narrates the scene:""There is Lee Oswald--(Gunshot) he's been shot. He's been shot. Lee Oswald has been shot. There's a man with a gun. And it's absolute panic"") to an interview with Madonna (when, in 1993, Bryant Gumbel asked her,""What is it about you people find so fascinating?"" she responded,""I don't know. I think you should ask them""). A 3-hour DVD accompanies the book.