The American Journey of Eric Sevareid

Sevareid (1912-1992) was born and raised in North Dakota--where he was known as Arnold--and led an idyllic childhood. When his father's bank failed in 1925, the family moved to Minnesota. After graduating from the University of Minnesota, he went to work for the Minneapolis Journal; when he was fired, he went to Europe, where he wrote for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune--and changed his given name to Eric. Soon he was recruited by Edward R. Murrow to report for CBS News, for whom he would cover some of the monumental events of the war. He fled Paris ahead of the inrushing Germans, bailed out of a crippled airplane in the Burma jungle and crossed the Rhine at the defeat of the Third Reich. The postwar years saw Sevareid taking the pulse of America on radio and TV, covering elections, Vietnam, assassinations and Watergate. The author also goes into Sevareid's hypochondria; his debilitating ``fear of the microphone''; his friendship with Adlai Stevenson; and his three marriages. Schroth (The Eagle and Brooklyn) has written an extremely thorough--if at times slow-moving--biography that will be of special interest to Sevareid aficionados. (Apr.)