I like Barbara Walters. I have a lot of respect for what she did for Women's Rights in our country.
But, to tell you the truth, I struggled to finish her book. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for another memoir.
Several people at work have read the book & have said that it was really & truly a "tell all" book. But honestly, I didn't really care to read about her early days. Or even her days starting out with NBC.
I will admit that what she had to write about the Fidel Castro interview was fascinating. And I thought she could have written a little more about 9/11. She named a whole chapter on the event, yet only a couple of pages were given to the event itself & the aftermath.
To anyone who watches The View on a regular basis, a lot of the information in the book is not all that surprising. I knew she had a daughter that had problems growing up. I knew the daughter was adopted. So not a lot of surprise there.
The book is very well written. It is told in Barbara Walter's speaking style. I could "hear" her voice as I read the book. And that made it a little more enjoyable.
Read it if you are interested in political history. Because most of her "behind the scenes" is more geared towards her political interviews. With a little celebrity "gossip" thrown in for good measure.
Barbara Walter's life was influenced greatly by her older sister and she's written a beautiful memoir about her life. I read another memoir of a life influence by a sibling that I recommend highly - I actually liked it even more. The memoir is ""My Stroke of Insight"" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Dr Taylor became a Harvard brain scientist to find the cause and cure for schizophrenia because her older brother was a sufferer. Then, crazy as life can be, Dr. Taylor had a stroke at age 37. What was amazing was that her left brain was shut down by the stroke - where language and thinking occur - but her right brain was fully functioning. She experienced bliss and nirvana and the way she writes about it (or talks about it in her now famous TED talk) is incredible.
What I took away from Dr. Taylor's book above all, and why I recommend it so highly, is that you don't have to have a stroke or take drugs to find the deep inner peace that she talks about. Her book explains how. ""I want what she's having"", and thanks to this wonderful book, I can!
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