Thorndike Press large print biographies and memoirs

Introduction: Million-dollar baby -- A glass eye and a British accent -- Roots -- Lou and Dena -- Never young -- "The strongest influence in my life" -- The fifth-grader and the bootlegger -- Another opening, another show -- The ostrich -- The speedwriting secretarial school -- The most forgettable husband; the most notorious friend -- Catastrophe -- "A halo of fear" -- Sunrise -- A godfather of the mafia sort -- Becoming Barbara Walters -- The runaway bride -- The "pushy cookie"-- "It's a girl!" -- A melody played in a penny arcade -- McGee's law -- When love is not enough -- Careful what you wish for -- Failure -- Fidel -- Comeback -- The man she married (but only once) -- The runaway daughter -- The honeymoon and the arms dealer -- Loss -- Diane -- You can't have it all -- The yin and the yang -- The Barbara Walters interview -- Bette Davis and the Dalai Lama -- The View -- Monica -- Trump -- One more time -- The fall -- The end -- Epilogue: The rulebreaker -- Acknowledgments -- Source notes -- Notes

In the annals of broadcast journalism, Barbara Walters is legendary. Acclaimed for her monumental "gets," Walters interviewed a veritable who's who of twentieth-century politicians and celebrities, amassing a master class trove of spirited and probing interrogatories that famously reduced her subjects to tears. In an era when the business of broadcast news was a firmly established old boys club, Walters took a battering ram to those clubhouse doors when, in 1976, she became co-anchor of ABC Nightly News. Not only was her position unprecedented, her million-dollar annual salary was record-shattering. Walters had toiled for decades in the trenches as a PR operative, low-level news writer, and participant in puff pieces on morning television; peers questioned her worthiness. Her career was forged during the days of second-wave feminism, and Walters was a highly visible target for the industry's and the nation's entrenched misogyny. Beyond the professional battles, her personal life suffered as well, through multiple marriages and a fractured relationship with her adopted daughter. Page, the Washington bureau chief for USA Today, presents an impeccably researched and deeply sourced biography and a respectful and balanced portrait of this groundbreaking icon of American journalism