An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen

by Peter L. W. Osnos

Overview

In more than five decades as a reporter, editor and publisher, Peter Osnos has had an especially good view of momentous events and relationships with some of the most influential personalities of our time.

As a young journalist for I.F. Stone's Weekly, one of the leading publications of the turbulent 1960s and in 18 years at The Washington Post , he covered the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, the Soviet Union at the height of Kremlin power, Washington D.C. as National Editor, "Swinging London" in the 60s and Thatcher's Britain in the 1980s.

At Random House and the company he founded, PublicAffairs, he was responsible for books by four presidents -Carter, Clinton, Obama and Trump; celebrated Washington figures including Robert McNamara, House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Vernon Jordan, first ladies Rosalynn Carter and Nancy Reagan, the billionaire George Soros, basketball superstars Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Magic Johnson, legendary spies, political dissidents and the writers, Molly Ivins and Peggy Noonan, among many others.

In this unusually wide-ranging memoir, Osnos uses a reporter's skills to portray historic events and encounters beginning with his parents' extraordinary World War II experiences escaping Europe to India, where he was born, to the present day. He shares unique portraits of the famous people he worked with and an insider's perspective of the news and publishing businesses. As he charts the evolution of his career and recent history, he also explores the influence and impact of family, character, curiosity, luck, resilience, a well-pressed suit and some unexpected wrinkles.

Also featuring a "virtual attic" of photographs, documents and video at anespeciallygoodview.com.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781735996806
Publisher:	Platform Books, LLC
Publication date:	06/01/2021
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Peter L.W. Osnos was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) India on October 13, 1943. He arrived in Los Angeles by ship with his parents and brother in February 1944. He was raised in New York and attended high school in Connecticut, college at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and graduate school at Columbia University. He worked as an assistant to the journalist I.F. Stone and joined the Washington Post in 1966. At the Post, Osnos served as a correspondent in Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and London. He was also the national and foreign editor. In 1984, Osnos joined Random House as a senior editor and later associate publisher as well as publisher of the Times Books imprint. In 1997, he founded PublicAffairs in partnership with the Perseus Books Group and served as publisher and editor at large until 2020. He was the founder of the Caravan Project on the development of digital and audio publishing, author of a weekly media column called Platform which was hosted by the Century Foundation and appeared on theatlantic.com and in 2020, launched Platform Books LLC with his wife, Susan Sherer Osnos.

The first book will be "An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen" to be released in June, 2021. It is Osnos' memoir to be distributed by Two Rivers/Ingram. He is the father of two children, Evan Osnos and Katherine Sanford, and grandfather of five. He and his wife now live in New York City and Lakeside, Michigan.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Who, What, When, Where, Why 1

Part 1 Passages

1 Caste: Polish 11

2 The Belnord 25

3 Founded in 1794 36

4 The Harvard of the Jews 43

5 The J School 58

6 Izzy 63

Part 2 Words, War, and Autocracy

7 Swinging London 71

8 Metro 83

9 Vietnam 94

10 Echoes of Vietnam 115

11 The Gap Years 122

12 Kutuzovsky 7/4 130

13 An Astonishing Cast of Russians 156

14 Thornapple 178

15 The Brits 192

Part 3 Books and Books

16 The Eleventh Floor 205

17 Breaking Through 222

18 The Art of the Deal 238

19 Bill and Barack 249

20 Mr. Clifford and Mr. Jordan 257

21 Superstar 264

22 It Takes All Kinds 269

23 The Talmud 282

24 Puzzles and the Endgame 289

Part 4 Shopkeeper

25 One Word, Cap A 301

26 No Longer a Startup, Not Yet an Antitrust Case 320

27 The Caravan Moves On 326

28 Pearl Dive 335

Part 5 Reflections

29 Wrinkles 343

30 Families, Communities, and Work 353

31 Time Present and Time Past 361

A Virtual Attic 365

Acknowledgments 391

Editorial Reviews

"It’s clear the book was a labor of love… Much of the memoir’s charm comes from Osnos’ candor and energy, and he concludes with a deeply personal retrospective of thought, grateful reflection, and pictorial extras that both seasoned and aspiring journalists will appreciate. The meticulously detailed, inspiring journey of an American news reporter and publisher." –Kirkus Reviews

“We have a soft spot for memoirs by journalists partly because ...they tell great war stories whether the blood is shared in battle or in the newsroom ....boy does he tell terrific stories...” –From Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley’s “Air Mail”

"Osnos has not written a memoir so much as a report from the front. Make that many fronts – the great news events of the past half-century, including the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and the Cold War. His upper-middle-class Jewish parents and brother escaped Poland as refugees in 1939, and with them as a 4-month-old, he arrived in the U.S. via India in a basket. A Washington Post journalist and founding book publisher of PublicAffairs, Osnos describes his attitude as “aggressive optimism.” That sensibility infuses his book with an irrepressible energy and enthusiasm tinged with enough self-doubt that one marvels at his seemingly dauntless talent for reinvention. “For reasons I cannot explain,” he writes in his book’s final part, “I have avoided wrinkles.” In junior high school and in Vietnam, he always appeared somewhat starched. With self-reflection absent from so many journalistic accounts, late in life he comes to understand his “emotional deflection” and the fact that “every life has its wrinkles, of the kind that can’t be addressed by having them pressed.” –The National Book Review

"To Peter Osnos: It's all your fault." –Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve Chair, in his memoir Keeping At It

"[It's been a] four-decade criminal conspiracy.... One arrest, one near arrest, stacks of KGB files, and now four books." –Natan Sharansky, acknowledgement to Peter Osnos in Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People

"To Peter Osnos: Our publisher, editor, referee, and friend." –Jimmy Carter, inscription in his book Always a Reckoning and Other Poems

"Never Trust an Editor. Never Trust an Editor. Never Trust an Editor." –Edna Buchanan, author of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, sign above her typewriter

From the Publisher

2021-03-30
A veteran journalist and editor shares a lifetime of dramatic career twists and turns.

Osnos (b. 1943), who founded PublicAffairs Books in 1997, has spent the last five decades as a journalist and editor in a variety of capacities. Arranged chronologically and loaded with specifics, the narrative begins with the author’s childhood. His parents, upper-middle-class Jews from Warsaw, fled during World War II to India, where Osnos was born, and then moved to the U.S. in 1944. From day camps to high school, his parents were “loving but largely disengaged by temperament and background from my ‘American’ choices.” Independent and strong-willed, Osnos boldly weathered the 1960s “pre-consciousness” era of burgeoning minority opportunities at Brandeis University. Through articles, books, a healthy memory, “and more memorabilia and notes than I realized there was,” Osnos candidly recollects the pivotal moments of an eventful life. He began his career modestly as an editorial assistant to progressive investigative reporter I.F. Stone before moving on to a nearly two-decade stint at the Washington Post. His time as a foreign correspondent provides fodder for culturally rich stories set in Vietnam; the Soviet Union, where his name was mentioned in classified KGB documents; and London, where he covered the birth of Prince William. In 1984, he transitioned to the book publishing world, working as an editor at Random House, where his roster of authors included Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Magic Johnson, Peggy Noonan, Molly Ivins, George Soros, Boris Yeltsin, and many other luminaries. All of the author’s personal and professional landmarks feature colorful characters and vivid, passionate narration. Even midway through, it’s clear the book was a labor of love, though at times, his enthusiasm becomes excessively digressive. Much of the memoir’s charm comes from Osnos’ candor and energy, and he concludes with a deeply personal retrospective of thought, grateful reflection, and pictorial extras that both seasoned and aspiring journalists will appreciate.

The meticulously detailed, inspiring journey of an American news reporter and publisher.

Kirkus Reviews