Reviews for The prince of darkness : 50 years reporting in Washington
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
The controversial conservative columnist bares all—or some, at any rate—to stake a claim for fame beyond naming Valerie Plame. To trust Novak, long ago nicknamed "the prince of darkness," he named Joe Wilson's CIA-agent wife as a sort of afterthought in the wake of a conversation with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Why, Novak asks, would the CIA send Wilson, with no intelligence experience, off to check on whether Saddam Hussein was buying yellow cake uranium in Niger? Because his wife is in the agency, Armitage replies: And the rest, apart from a quick check of Who's Who, is history. "I have written many, many more important columns," Novak laments, "but the one on the CIA leak case will forever be part of my public identity." As if by way of rebuttal, Novak's memoir offers a rich self-assessment of his work. Regardless of what one thinks of his politics, which can charitably be branded as somewhere between paleoconservative and reactionary, Novak's abilities as a writer of vigorous, highly readable prose are not to be dismissed. And admirably for a journalist these days, Novak takes pride in his legendary scrappiness: "I am not a person who is easy for a lot of people to like," he writes. "No stirrer-up of strife is ever very popular." When he is not recounting his stinging disagreements with every administration since Ike's—his longtime partner Rowland Evans made Nixon's enemies list, but Novak, unaccountably, did not—Novak details the boozy world of Washington politics, writing, for instance, that Daniel Patrick Moynihan "was most qualified to be president and did not make it," thanks in good measure to an over-fondness for the sauce. Moreover, he tallies up his legendary feuds with just about everyone who is anyone—revealing, along the way, that political operatives such as Carville and Atwater can be as vicious to their own kind as to their enemies. Sure to be popular reading inside the Beltway, and worthy of an audience far beyond it as well. Copyright ŠKirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
The barbs start flying on page one (Bush critic Joseph Wilson: "What an asshole!") and continue to nearly the end (CNN correspondent Ed Henry: "duplicitous phony") of this thick memoir by the conservative journalist and pundit. Novak recounts his journey from Associated Press cub reporter through longtime "Evans and Novak" columnist scooping up Beltway political dirt to ubiquitous talk-show talking head. Along the way he drinks and gambles, battles liberal media bias, wrangles contracts with cable channels, settles scores with critics (more-hawkish-than-thou pundit David Frum is "a cheat and a liar"), defends his outing of Valerie Plame and tosses in many old columns, which read like a seismograph tracing of political microtremors (Melvin Laird to be Nixon's defense secretary!). More tantalizing are the glimpses of his relations with official sources, who know they won't be attacked in print as long as they give good tips. Novak's insider perspective, vitriolic pen and damn-the-torpedoes frankness make it a lively and eye-opening account of big-foot journalism. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Novak immediately cuts to the chase, beginning this memoir with his first in-person encounter with Joseph Wilson, in the green room of NBC's Meet the Press in 2003. Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, would eventually form the center of a major career-jeopardizing controversy for Novak, who is blunt in his immediate low opinion of the man. And that characteristic bluntness reigns throughout as he recalls 50 years of political reporting. He was working for the Associated Press when he met his mentor, Willard Edwards of the Chicago Tribune, a diehard right-wing Republican who was part of the Red-hunting establishment. Edwards is only one of the fascinating characters--both reporters and politicos--appearing throughout the book, including John and Bobby Kennedy, George W. Bush, Ted Turner, and Novak's former partner, Rowland Evans. He is frank and unapologetic about his work, his viewpoints, and his personal shortcomings. Ambitious and, for a while, very much a part of the liquor-soaked Washington power scene, Novak neglected his family. True to his conservative beliefs and sentiments, he traces the trajectory of Republican influence and his disagreement with Republican presidents. Novak also traces the growth of Washington from a sleepy town to a power center, prone to treacherous machinations. Having traveled through the chronology of news events of the past 50 years, Novak returns to the Plame Affair, detailing the fallout of his column outing Plame as a CIA agent and expresses no regrets. --Vanessa Bush Copyright 2007 Booklist
