Good Morning, I'm Joan Lunden

The cohost of Good Morning America grew up in affluence in California, the daughter of a surgeon whose death in a plane crash when she was 14 was the only traumatic experience of her early years. Her education tended to keep her out of the mainstream, according to Lunden, and she got into TV simply because someone suggested that she try. After two years in Sacramento, she was hired by New York's Eyewitness News, perhaps, suggest the authors, because the producers were looking for an archetypal WASP; she was given assignments for GMA and later moved over to the network program. We're told interesting details about working on a television program, clearly no sinecure, and about Lunden's domestic life as a wife and mother of two. And we're offered behind-the-scenes closeups of Lunden's interviews with Prince Charles and other greats and near-greats. Photos not seen by PW. (August 19)