Max Frankel - The Times of My Life and My Life with The Times

A gold mine of fascinating information.

The Washington Times

A thoughtful, informative book. Frankel has a remarkable story, and he tells it well.An absorbing story made even more interesting by what he had gone through to get there. He writes in fascinating detail about the historic printing of the Pentagon Papers.

Houston Chronicle

In the current era when millions of actual and potential readers distrust news coverage, Frankels memoir ought to restore at least a bit of lost confidence.His brief but memorable chapters about covering the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations pack in more insights than entire books by other journalists who were there. Despite the books length, I wanted more; twice as long would not have been too long for me.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Gripping storytellinga luminous new chapter in Holocaust literature. At its best, The Times of My Life offers deft judgments of the world figures [Frankel] encountered up close. Throughout, Frankel displays his sophisticated grasp of the built-in tension between the prime sources of the news and its gatherers.

The New York Times

From his childhood escape from Nazi Germany to confidential encounters with presidents Johnson and Nixon to his wifes struggle with brain cancer, Frankel captures a remarkable life in vigorous, engaging prose. Frankels impact on the Times makes for absorbing reading. But more compelling is Frankels quintessentially American success story.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

CompellingIt is a tale of consummate journalistic endeavor and success, told by a master storyteller. Frankel takes the reader along for his glorious ride, folding broad context into personal anecdote in the manner of the very best historians.

Columbia Journalism Review

This memoir is both an account of survival in Hitlers Germany and an American success story played out against some of the most interesting events of the century. He offers his impressions of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, and leaders such as Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. There are also interesting passages about the inner workings of the Times, including Frankels efforts to diversify its staff.

Arizona Republic

Mr. Frankel gives rare insights not only into what is news, but into how news coverage often shades into news creation.

The Dallas Morning News

Informative, thoughtful, delightful. An honest, bracing memoir from one of the nations most distinguished journalistsa tale of escape, assimilation, and success. This critical, self-critical, and wise story of Frankels life will also be catnip to those who wish to learn more of the internal history of The Times.

Kirkus Reviews

CompellingThis elegantly written, career-capping memoir by the retired executive editor of The New York Times has much to engage the general reader. He takes us behind the headlines.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Frankel has obviously led a colorful life. This book, however, makes him out to be something more: a truly honest man of integrity. Frankels journalistic instincts are consistently right on target.

Booklist

A Delta Book

Published by

Dell Publishing

a division of

Random House, Inc.

1540 Broadway

New York, New York 10036

Copyright 1999 by Max Frankel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Random House, New York, N.Y.

Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

ISBN9780385334983

eBook ISBN9781101969106

Reprinted by arrangement with Random House

Book design by Mercedes Everett, adapted for ebook

v4.1

a

For MomPop

With Joyce, David, Margot, and Jon

Contents

REFUGEE
19301940

PATRIOT
19401948

SKEPTIC
19481955

REPORTER: C OLD W AR E AST
19561961

REPORTER: C OLD W AR W EST
19611972

EDITOR
19721994

A BOUT The Times of My Life

E very time I marveled at the chain of absurd circumstance that plucked us from a town in Nazi Saxony mere moments before the Holocaust and eventually delivered us to the ark America, Mom would scoff, speak a word for God or Fate, and tell me to get on with life. She took pride, of course, in her world-trotting journalist and editor of the Greatest Paper on Earth, but she had no patience for his sense of vainglorious melodrama. Everybody who got out has got a story to tell, she would say dismissively, never realizing how much she stirred my desire to recount ours.

Tyrannies We Have Known was the title I imagined for volume 1, to cover our international adventures: one familys survival of both Hitler and Stalin and my lifelong fascination with the disease of totalitarianism. Secrets I Have Known and Blown seemed suitable for volume 2, to recount my newspaper experiences and recall the scoops, leaks, and hemorrhages of Cold War journalism. To complete the tale, I dreamt of risking a philosophical treatise for volume 3, honoring the plaintive request to Mom from Berlins commissioner of police in 1940 with the title Will You Tell Them Were Not All Bad?a suitable epitaph for twentieth-century civilization.

My pretentious trilogy will not be written. As Mom tried to teach me, every life is a journey, a narrative in search of meaning. Nonetheless I dredged her memory over the years, and Pops, and finally my own, for the simple reason that our predicaments conspired to make me a professional witness to the times of my life. A paid teller of stories, I judged my own as worth adding to the many I had already spun.

It is the story of a fugitive, beginning with a desperate pursuit of permits and passports to get our family past the borders of hate and barriers of indifference that defined our times. It describes a search for identity as well as safety, a yearning to belong but also to keep on running, to make a career of my rovings, my outsiderhood.

I escaped into America, and beyond it. The idea of America became my proud passport. A passion to conform made me a patriot. The discovery of words turned me into a skeptic. And the journalists press pass sent me vaulting across borders to gain a spectacular perspective on our era. Like the astronauts floating in outer space, Ive had a rare glimpse of the earth in my times, and it gave me an irrepressible urge to record the journey.