Off Camera: Private Thoughts Made Public

By Ted Koppel

Book Overview

One of America's most admired TV anchors gives us an intimate chronicle of the final year of the twentieth century. In this engrossing narrative, a national bestseller, are all the most significant matters of that year--from Bill Clinton's impeachment to Columbine, from the war in Kosovo to Y2K and the mass-marketing of Viagra. Here are the people who made the news--from Slobodan Milosevic to Hillary Rodham Clinton to Michael Jordan to John F. Kennedy Jr. The events of 1999 anticipate so many of the on-going challenges America faces today that Koppel's account feels entirely prescient. Koppel's book moves on yet another level as events trigger memories of his own past, providing a more personal resonance to his telling of the history we all share. He takes us back to the England in which he lived until he was thirteen. He revisits his powerful experiences as an interviewer investigating prison abuses and probing the violence in our schools. He discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the media; he talks about racial intolerance, about brutality toward gay people, about the absence of political leadership. He also examines such cultural phenomena as our obsession with celebrity and the impact of great theater and overhyped movies. Here is the voice we knew so well from Nightline --intelligent, curious, opinionated, witty, concerned--reminding us in entertaining and thought-provoking ways that even the most public events reverberate in our private lives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375727086
• ISBN13: 9780375727085
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Ignore the bad reviews!

Ted Koppel's Off Camera is a caring and informative view into just that, his thoughts and daily activities off camera. Mr Koppel provides us daily journal entries from the year 1999. From Monica to the strains of reporting from Kosovo. I loved reading this book.

Do your best

The only sentence I like in the whole book in on page 319: December: "There have obviously been days when my only motive has been 'to get the damned thing done.'" I think if you read this sentence first then you will enjoy reading this book more. When you read some very dry entries you will understand the frastration of a wonderful person try to do his best to finish the book project He has committed. No one else in the world would commit 365(alomost) entries and end up with a wonderful book like this,or to himself, the damned thing. His thoughts was not as sharp as he was on Nightline though. You do not read Ted himself in this book but his devoted spirit between the lines. Tell you the truth, you can find the mean part of him in this book. And he is trying to be politically correct. Is he?

simple & beautiful

this is one the most beautiful books i ever read. I am almost sure that this book will be the best seller one thousand year from now .many people will buy it as gift for the year 2999 .It is a new style in writing : simple and beautiful

Excellent, not perfect, but still excellent

Mr. Ted Koppel is easily one of the most respected journalists we have the pleasure of listening to and watching almost daily. He has honed his craft for 36 years, and has anchored "Nightline" for nearly 20 years. If peer recognition is used as a measure of his contribution and talent, 32 Emmy Awards, 6 Peabody Awards, 9 Overseas Press Awards, and several others clearly demonstrate he is held in high regard.As the book takes place in a daily entry format, it is not as fluid as more traditional prose, and Mr. Koppel clearly enjoyed having some fun while documenting the remarkable events that a successful career, that is his, entails. I refer specifically to his asides about his food shopping at Giant Supermarkets. These light diversions are at times extremely funny and serve to demonstrate a wit that I was not familiar with. Even though they reside on competing networks, he clearly could step in for Andy Rooney if the occasion arose.The thoughts recorded over the year of 1999 are in the main serious by themselves, and in the specifics of the topics he describes. He is brutally candid about an enormous range of issues, and this is the only reason I can think of that would cause some readers to not like this book. I still believe his insights are valuable even if one or more may not be in line with your own.If you are a supporter of President Clinton, you will not like this book. Mr. Koppel has strong feelings about what a President should be, what a leader is, and Mr. Clinton does not meet any of them. The Clintons evidently feel the same, as when Elie Wiesel asked that Mr. Koppel be one of his 5 friends at a dinner for him at The Whitehouse, the invitation was never sent. Though Mr. Koppel never expected the invitation to be honored, it clearly offended Mr. Wiesel, and demonstrated the pettiness that The White House can enjoy.I enjoyed the format of the book as he spoke briefly in his entries as measured by length, by expressed more understanding of his chosen topics than many books on the same subjects convey. In 3 paragraphs he flays foreign policy for the contradiction in terms it often is, and in slightly more space he demonstrates how strange the attitudes toward Mr. Clinton have been. There were a series of questions asked by pollsters, and not one was ambiguous in expressing the thoughts of those asked; "the majority (73-79%) of the American people are perfectly content to have a President whom they regard as having low moral and ethical standards, who is not a positive role model for young people and who is neither honest nor trustworthy, but who appears, figuratively speaking, to be bringing home the bacon." Former Democratic Governor of New York Mr. Mario Cuomo said, "Yeah, I wouldn't trust this guy in Church, and I wouldn't let him date my Sister, but he's a terrific President." One has to wonder which of Mr. Clinton's frailties Mr. Cuomo lacked that kept him from seeking the Presidency.We learn who he believes constitutes a leader, Win

Excellent...

The diary is just that...a view to a personal side of a public person. He writes as he speaks: clearly and with an iconoclastic wit. His writings from the Balkans are his best. His views on Clinton/Lewinsky are interesting as thoughts on a work in progress.