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Maverick: Fifty Years of Investigative Reporting
Maverick Fifty Years of Investigative Reporting Author:Fred J. Cook For more than half a century, Fred J. Cook has been the conscience of American journalism. Before there was even such a term as 'investigative reporter,' he was exposing crooked cops and malfeasant mayors, defending the victims of the system whom everyone else had forgotten, standing up to the Red-baiters and the McCarthyites, bringing t... more »o light the details that no one else had seen and the facts that others wanted buried. When other reporters went with the pack, Cook was the maverick who would not rest until he had told the truth.
Fred Cook began his career on local New Jersey newspapers, was on the staff of the New York World-Telegram and Sun in the 1940s and 1950s, and since 1959 has done a number of special series for The Nation, plus countless articles for The New York Times Magazine, New York, Reader's Digest, and other publications.
Now, in this book, he takes us inside that long and distinguished career. He writes of such small-scale conspiracies as a gambling boat in Jersey and of the oil scam and other large-scale conspiracies. He writes of the tragedy of William Remington and the near tragedy (averted thanks to Cook) of Air Force Major Marion Denton. He takes us back to discover little-known details in the cases of Alger Hiss and Sacco-Vanzetti. He reveals the truth about the gun that was claimed to have killed John F. Kennedy and examines the hate machinery of the Radical Right.
But this is more than just a behind-the-scenes look at American journalism at its finest. It is an intimate and soul-baring story of a dogged and courageous reporter who has been there, on the front lines of the news, for five fascinating decades.« less