12/01/2022
The events of 9/11 altered Fox News reporter Leventhal's life. He witnessed victims' faces, etched with horror, emerging from debris clouds just blocks from the scene, and he felt the visceral rumble as each tower collapsed. The experience propelled him to report while accompanying deployed troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya for months over the course of years. Domestically, he covered 15 hurricanes, including Andrew and Katrina. After 24 years at Fox, love lured him away from reporting to marry Kelly Dodd of The Real Housewives of Orange County fame. In this book, Leventhal succeeds in delivering an overall emotional punch. Serious tonal incongruities appear, however, when he talks about his coverage of desecrated recovered bodies after the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse and the 2002 beheading of reporter Daniel Pearl. Abrupt segues to meeting Kelly and their courtship during New York City's 2020 COVID lockdown feel insensitive. VERDICT This personal glimpse into more than two decades of broadcast journalism is quite engaging and highly evocative, but some readers may be put off by the parts about the pandemic and by the ending.—Jessica A. Bushore
