Over The Counter #274

What books caught my eye this week as they passed over the library counter and under my scanner? This week - books people have written about their jobs. Or memoirs if you prefer.

First up is The Story: A Reporter's Journey by Judith Miller.

From the publisher, Simon and Schuster:

"Star reporter for the New York Times, the world’s most powerful newspaper; foreign correspondent in some of the most dangerous fields; Pulitzer winner; longest jailed correspondent for protecting her sources, Judith Miller is highly respected and controversial. In this memoir, she turns her reporting skills on herself with the intensity of her professional vocation.

Judy Miller grew up near the Nevada atomic proving ground. She got a job at the New York Times after a suit by women employees about discrimination at the paper and went on to cover national politics, head the paper’s bureau in Cairo, and serve as deputy editor in Paris and then deputy at the powerful Washington bureau. She reported on terrorism and the rise of fanatical Islam in the Middle East and on secret biological weapons plants and programs in Iraq, Iran, and Russia. She covered an administration traumatized by 9/11 and an anthrax attack three weeks later. Miller shared a Pulitzer for her reporting.

She turns her journalistic skills on herself and her controversial reporting which marshaled evidence that led America to invade Iraq. She writes about the mistakes she and others made on the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. She addresses the motives of some of her sources, including the notorious Iraqi Chalabi and the CIA. She describes going to jail to protect her sources in the Scooter Libby investigation of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and how the Times subsequently abandoned her after twenty-eight years.

The Story describes the real life of a foreign and investigative reporter. It is an adventure story, told with bluntness and wryness."

Next up is Does This Mean You'll See Me Naked: Field Notes From a Funeral Director by Robert Webster.

From the publisher, Sourcebooks:

"With curious anecdotes and unbelievable truth, funeral director Robert Webster reveals that answer and more, offering readers entertaining and quirky stories gleaned from a life lived around death. Webster tackles those embarrassing questions we all have about what really goes on behind the scenes when you've left this world:

- Strange things people put in caskets - The biggest rip-offs in the business - The crazy things that happen to a body after death - Lime, wax, and other ways to hide the truth - The most important thing an undertaker does - How to avoid the high-pressure funeral parlor - What, that's not a coffin the body is resting in "

(Over the Counter is a regular feature at A Bookworm's World. I've sadly come the realization that I cannot physically read every book that catches my interest as it crosses over my counter at the library. But... I can mention them and maybe one of them will catch your eye as well. See if your local library has them on their shelves!)