Rather Dumb: A Top Tabloid Reporter tells CBS How to Do News Book

2.5 stars rounded up.

This is an interesting but not compelling book about the 1960s. Tom Brokaw interviews a number of famous and not so famous people about their experiences in the 1960s. It is Brokaw's premise that the decade of the 60s had an inordinate effect on the decades that followed. Sometimes I could see his point; other times his trying to show the lasting effects of a particular occurrence or trend was a real stretch. He discusses civil rights, politics, Vietnam, women's rights and popular music. In the first section, he discusses what happened; in the second section he discusses the repercussions and the third section, how it all is connected. Oddly, the last section has a chapter entitled "The View from the Moon", yet he barely covers the space race and how we freaking landed on the moon!

Some sections and interviews are fascinating; others are mind numbing. After 300 pages, I found myself skimming a lot, then slowing down to read something that caught my interest. The book comes with a dvd which has excerpts from a TV special "1968 with Tom Brokaw". I haven't watched it yet, but I will.

After watching Brokaw on TV for years, I could hear his voice narrating the book as I read it. There is also a lot about his own life in the book, and how he experienced the 60s. As he interviews people, you never quite know how he feels about what they are saying, if he agrees or disagrees, which is disappointing. I would have liked a little less objectivity and some more personalization in the book.

I was just a kid in the 60s, and so reading parts of this book gave me a more adult perspective on what happened. The 60s were an extremely emotional decade, what with a series of assassinations, an unpopular war, political upheaval and a counter culture movement occurring in a short period of time, capped by a moon landing. This book is almost devoid of emotion which betrays the essence of the decade. It is a dry, intellectual evaluation of a time that was anything but.

I learned some things, but overall, I found the book to be disappointing.