The stories behind some of the great stories in history, and the daring and dedication of the reporters who told them, are recounted in "Breaking News: How The Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else" (Princeton Architectural Press).
It's an edge-of-the-seat account about those AP reporters who often risked their very lives to gather and report the news, revealing their insights and personal perspectives, along with on-the-spot photographs that provide a breathtaking front-row seat as history was being made.
Did you know that:
• In 1849, Daniel H. Craig was hired to establish the agency's first office outside the U.S., in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where newspapers on ships from Europe could be obtained before they reached Boston. As AP's first foreign correspondent, Craig delivered exclusive news of an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria in London that year, and it was relayed to AP in New York by ship, horseback and telegraph.
• On the road to Burma in 1944, AP correspondent Frank Martin, observing a tribe of Naga headhunters singing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" as the skeletons of 30,000 refugees lay nearby, reported that the tribe had learned the song from a missionary they had later beheaded.
• After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, AP reporter Kathryn Johnson was welcomed into the King household in Atlanta, sometimes cooking bacon and eggs for mourners and hungry children, but also filing stories from the Kings' home.
• As the last Americans fled Vietnam in 1975, AP Saigon bureau chief George Esper served Coca-Cola and stale pound cake to two North Vietnamese soldiers before calmly writing the bulletin announcing the fall of Saigon.
These are just a few of the fascinating facts in this gripping tour through 160 years of national and international news, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters and punctuated by iconic, unforgettable photos. With a foreword penned by the late David Halberstam, the book can make a terrific present for any lover of news, sports, history or all of the above.
