Get the Damn Story: Homer Bigart and the Great Age of American Newspapers

The captivating story of an influential journalist demonstrates the value of a free press to democratic society

In the decades between the Great Depression and the advent of cable television, when daily newspapers set the conversational agenda in the United States, the best reporter in the business was a rumpled, hard-drinking figure named Homer Bigart. Despite two Pulitzers and a host of other prizes, he quickly faded from public view after retirement. Few today know the extent to which he was esteemed by his peers. Get the Damn Story is the first comprehensive biography to encompass all of Bigart’s journalism, including both his war reporting and coverage of domestic events. Writing for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times, Bigart brought to life many events that defined the era--the wars in Europe, the Pacific, Korea, and Vietnam; the civil rights movement; the creation of Israel; the end of colonialism in Africa; and the Cuban Revolution. The news media’s collective credibility may have diminished in the age of Twitter, but Bigart’s career demonstrates the value to a democratic society of a relentless, inquiring mind examining its institutions and the people who run them. The principle remains the same today: the truth matters. Historians and journalists alike will find Bigart’s story well worth reading.

Thomas W. Lippman is a DC-based author and journalist who has specialized in Middle Eastern affairs and American foreign policy for more than three decades. As a foreign correspondent of the Washington Post, he covered wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, and Somalia. The author of nine books, including most recently Crude Oil, Crude Money: Aristotle Onassis, Saudi Arabia, and the CIA, Lippman won the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Award for biography from the Independent Book Publishers Association for his profile of another unsung hero, USMC Colonel Bill Eddy.