An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen

The acclaimed journalist and publisher debuts with an underwhelming look at his life. Osnos was born in 1943 in India and immigrated to the U.S. with his family shortly after. He grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, studied journalism at Columbia, and moved to Washington, D.C., to write for the liberal-leaning I.F. Stone’s Weekly in 1965. That, in turn, led to his 18-year career with the Washington Post, where he covered the Vietnam War and the Soviet Union, served as the paper’s foreign editor, and eventually became its national editor. He left journalism in 1984 to join Random House, where he founded his own imprint, PublicAffairs, in 1997. Early on, Osnos confesses that, in writing his memoir, he erred on the side of overinclusiveness; that choice inundates his narrative with extraneous details such as a self-serving nod to childhood friends including actor Brandon De Wilde (“my most famous playmate”) and Hill Street Blues creator Steven Bochco. Other musings border on tone-deaf—in one instance he reflects he couldn’t “imagine a better way” for a reporter with a young family to spend their time than three “engrossing” years living in the Soviet Union (failing to note the challenges his wife and daughter must have experienced). While Osnos has undoubtedly had an impressive career, less would’ve been more here. (June)