The Making of an Ink-Stained Wretch: Half a Century Pounding the Political Beat

Witcover, Jules. The Making of an Ink-Stained Wretch: Half a Century Pounding the Political Beat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 343 pp. $30.

Reporting on government to the governed, whether from city hall or the White House, is at the core of what the press is supposed to do under the important franchise of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Jules Witcover has been doing just that for more than a half century, mostly from the dizzy pinnacle power center of American government in Washington. And, like many others who have gone before him in covering the White House and the page-one stories out of the nation's capital, he felt it was time to write a memoir of that career.

Somehow, this just does not seem to be his best work, despite the respect he is due for diligent and productive reportage and commentary on the events that have shaped our lives as American...