Telling the Untold Story: How Investigative Reporters Are Changing the Craft of Biography

For those who agree with Weinberg that the public has a right to know everything about a public figure--and who have no qualms about invading privacy--this study will be a boon. Yet although he is critical of certain biographers, among them Kitty Kelley (exempting her Frank Sinatra book, His Way ), for their tell-alls, he fails to clearly define distinctions as to why an expose of, say, Henry Kissinger or Ron Hubbard, is justifiable but not, for example, a similar work on Jacqueline Onassis, only expressing disapproval of exposure ``for exposure's sake.'' Some readers might feel personally threatened, with cause, as the author details his own research for his biography Armand Hammer : he obtained data about Hammer's land transactions, his secured loans, the tax returns of his foundation and, using Lexis, a legal data base, he was able to search through foreign court systems. Arguing his thesis that a background in investigative journalism is the best training for a biographer, Weinberg identifies one-time reporter Robert Caro as in the vanguard of investigative biography with The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York , published in 1974; he then singles out Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele's 1979 biography of Howard Hughes, Empire , as the ``most important post-Robert Moses biography.'' Weinberg is at his most interesting when he follows the paper trail of these authors' researches, but decidedly less so when he reprints a fulsome 1989 article from the Los Angeles Times about Armand Hammer . (Oct.)