Writer Chiu captures a half-century of American popular culture in nearly 400 images from CBS's archive. The captioned photographs feature such personalities as Lucille Ball, Bob (Captain Kangaroo) Keeshan, Rod Serling, Larry Hagman, Tom Selleck, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, David Letterman, and Fran Drescher. 9.5x11". Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

“An illuminating TV show biography” (Kirkus Reviews), the ultimate inside story of 60 Minutes—the program that has tracked and shaped the biggest moments in post-war American history. From its almost accidental birth in 1968, 60 Minutes has set the standard for broadcast journalism. The show has profiled every major leader, artist, and movement of the past five decades, perfecting the news-making interview and inventing the groundbreaking TV exposé. From legendary sit-downs with Richard Nixon in 1968 and Bill Clinton in 1992 to landmark investigations into the tobacco industry, Lance Armstrong’s doping, and the torture of prisoners in Abu-Ghraib, the broadcast has not just reported on our world but changed it, too. Executive Producer Jeff Fager takes us into the editing room with the show’s brilliant producers and beloved correspondents, including hard-charging Mike Wallace, writer’s-writer Morley Safer, soft-but-tough Ed Bradley, relentless Lesley Stahl, intrepid Scott Pelley, and illuminating storyteller Steve Kroft. He details the decades of human drama that have made the show’s success possible: the ferocious competition between correspondents, the door slamming, the risk-taking, and the pranks. Above all, Fager reveals the essential tenets that have never changed: why founder Don Hewitt believed “hearing” a story is more important than seeing it, why the “small picture” is the best way to illuminate a larger one, and why the most memorable stories are almost always those with a human being at the center. “As traditional reporting is increasingly being challenged by high-decibel, opinion-drenched media, Fager highlights storytelling that conveys a deep understanding of issues and demonstrates the power of television to inform” (The Washington Post). Fifty Years of 60 Minutes is at once a sweeping portrait of fifty years of American cultural history and an intimate look at how the news gets made.

A couple years back, I was at the Phoenix airport bar. It was empty except for one heavy-set, gray bearded, grizzled guy who looked like he just rode his donkey into town after a long day of panning for silver in them thar hills. He ordered a Jack Daniels straight up, and that's when I overheard the young guy with the earring behind the bar asking him if he had ID. At first the old sea captain just laughed. But the guy with the twinkle in his ear asked again. At this point it became apparent that he was serious. Dan Haggerty's dad fired back, "You've got to be kidding me, son." The bartender replied, "New policy. Everyone has to show their ID." Then I watched Burl Ives reluctantly reach into his dungarees and pull out his military identification card from World War II. It's a sad and eerie harbinger of our times that the Oprah-watching, crystal-rubbing, Whole Foods-shopping moms and their whipped attorney husbands have taken the ability to reason away from the poor schlub who makes the Bloody Marys. What we used to settle with common sense or a fist, we now settle with hand sanitizer and lawyers. Adam Carolla has had enough of this insanity and he's here to help us get our collective balls back. In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks is Adam's comedic gospel of modern America. He rips into the absurdity of the culture that demonized the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, turned the nation's bathrooms into a lawless free-for-all of urine and fecal matter, and put its citizens at the mercy of a bunch of minimum wagers with axes to grind. Peppered between complaints Carolla shares candid anecdotes from his day to day life as well as his past—Sunday football at Jimmy Kimmel's house, his attempts to raise his kids in a society that he mostly disagrees with, his big showbiz break, and much, much more. Brilliantly showcasing Adam's spot-on sense of humor, this book cements his status as a cultural commentator/comedian/complainer extraordinaire.

On 29 July 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which became operational on 1 October of that year. Over the next 50 years, NASA achieved a set of spectacular feats, ranging from advancing the well-established field of aeronautics to pioneering the new fields of Earth and space science and human spaceflight. In the midst of the geopolitical context of the Cold War, 12 Americans walked on the Moon, arriving in peace “for all mankind.” Humans saw their home planet from a new perspective, with unforgettable Apollo images of Earthrise and the “Blue Marble,” as well as the “pale blue dot” from the edge of the solar system. A flotilla of spacecraft has studied Earth, while other spacecraft have probed the depths of the solar system and the universe beyond. In the 1980s, the evolution of aeronautics gave us the first winged human spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station stands as a symbol of human cooperation in space as well as a possible way station to the stars. With the Apollo fire and two Space Shuttle accidents, NASA has also seen the depths of tragedy. In this volume, a wide array of scholars turn a critical eye toward NASA’s first 50 years, probing an institution widely seen as the premier agency for exploration in the world, carrying on a long tradition of exploration by the United States and the human species in general. Fifty years after its founding, NASA finds itself at a crossroads that historical perspectives can only help to illuminate.

This is the first in-depth look at the development of the television newscast, the most popular source of news for over forty-five years.During the 1940s, most journalists ignored or dismissed television, leaving the challenge to a small group of people working above New York City's Grand Central Terminal. Without the pressures of ratings, sponsors, company oversight, or many viewers, the group refused to recreate newspapers, radio, or newsreels on the new medium. They experimented, argued, tested, and eventually settled on a format to exploit television's strengths. This book documents that process, challenging common myths - including the importance of a popular anchor, and television's inability to communicate non-visual stories - and crediting those whose work was critical in the formation of television as a news format, and illustrating the pressures and professional roadblocks facing those who dare question journalistic traditions of any era. -- Publisher.

The producer for "60 Minutes" recounts his early experiences and his more than fifty years with CBS, including the first broadcasts of political conventions, the Kennedy-Nixon debates, and the events portrayed in the film "The Insider."