Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 26, 1993 TAG: 9310140309
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Stamberg's stock-in-trade is her fertile mind and neighborly manner. She seems to address each of her listeners personally in a cheerful, often humorous way.
A few years ago, Stamberg put together a book called ``Every Night at Five: Susan Stamberg's `All Things Considered' Book'' (Turtle Bay Books, $24).
Now she has issued another: ``Talk - NPR's Susan Stamberg Considers All Things.'' It's a collection of interviews with and reports on such subjects as Nancy Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, Rosa Parks, Annie Leibovitz, Ethel Merman, Mary Hemingway, Jane Goodall and John Ehrlichman, plus a host of less- recognizable names. There is a heavy emphasis on the arts - Stamberg went to the High School of Music and Art in New York, she informs us - and there is quite a lot of what has come to be called political correctness, as well.
There is a lot of Susan in it, too. The introductions to the various segments include her brief reflections on her experiences with the subjects - reflections that are personal and, occasionally, excessive. Here is how she describes her interest in Ernest Hemingway, a prelude to her talk with the author's fourth wife:
``By the seventies, the Nobel laureate who had reinvented the novel was considered a sexist fraud, a man who had put more energy into his macho life- style than into his art. I parted company with the Papa-bashers. I loved Hemingway's writing, and wanted to know what this giant - who occupies so much space on my bookshelves, who taught me that in good sex the earth moves, who showed me Paris before I ever got there - was really like.''
A little of that kind of writing goes a long way. In this book, there is lots of it. By the end we are more familiar than perhaps we want to be with Susan's son, Josh, the actor; her husband, Lou, (perhaps the only decent white male in this country); and Susan's own heroic efforts on behalf of better treatment for women at NPR, better coverage of the AIDS crisis by the network's news reporters despite in-house opposition and other noble causes.
Fortunately, there also are lively, revealing interviews with Ehrlichman, Nancy Reagan and others. Stamberg's description of Mrs. Reagan's treatment of her and her engineer - making them wait in the cold for 30 minutes, entering the room and emptying the ashtrays before deigning to greet them - is a gem. She knew Reagan was upset with President Carter, Stamberg says, but ``I began to wonder if she was angry with me.''
Susan Stamberg is like that: forward, funny and if not exactly humble, then gracious beyond words. She is an adroit conversationalist, the kind you're lucky to sit next to on a plane or at dinner, because she not only shares her feelings and opinions but manages to get you to reconsider yours.
In the end, you can't help but be charmed by her contradictions. Here is Susan proudly anointing Barbara Bush as ``my fourth first lady.'' And here she is, two paragraphs later, describing perfectly what it's like to be an unsure young reporter at a news conference with a mass of grizzled vets.
``At some point in a reporter's life comes the realization that her own reaction to what she is observing is, in fact, the news,'' she says.
Susan Stamberg gives her own reactions to the news and calls it news. That's why it's different, and that's what makes it memorable.
``Talk - NPR's Susan Stamberg Considers All Things''
Turtle Bay Books. $24.
by CNB