While I originally requested this thinking it would be a fun nostalgia trip (spoiler alert: it is). It's an incredibly well written look into the television show and the show's incredible 50 years of investigative journalism.

"'Wille Nelson?' Mike said in disgust. 'Willie Nelson? I said Winnie and Nelson--as in Mandela!' And then with real attitude he snapped, 'Heard of them?' He ended with a classic Mike Wallace line: 'Excuse me, I didn't realize I had wandered into the toy department.' Mike then left the office and, walking down the hall, shouted back to Josh, 'Good luck with your next career move!'"

60 Minutes first aired in 1968, a year for news if ever there was one. It was brilliantly conceived as a television news magazine, covering multiple unrelated news stories in a single broadcast. Executive producer Jeff Fager offers the reader an insider’s peek; lucky me, I read it early and free thanks to Simon and Schuster and Net Galley. It’s for sale today.

60 Minutes did the stories nobody else was doing, and its correspondents were geniuses at persuading their subjects to open up and tell the world what it wanted to know. From President-elect Richard Nixon, who promised to ‘restore respect to the presidency’, to the torture of prisoners at Abu-Ghraib, 60 Minutes has been there and spoken to those that have done these things or bourn witness to them. I’ll bet I am not the only viewer that remembers the interview with the bitter, dying tobacco executive with throat cancer, rasping out what he knows on television. From Miss Piggy to the Ayatollah Khomeini, from Lance Armstrong to Khadafi, everyone has 15 minutes of fame…did they interview Andy Warhol? I’ll bet they did.

Just as on the show, the book touches briefly but meaningfully on each subject, complete with lovely color photographs, both formal and candid, and then moves on before one can become bored. The careers of the professionals that worked on the show, behind the scenes and on it, are also described. Perhaps the most poignant is when ancient Andy Rooney, past 90, developing Alzheimer’s, but still in the saddle, keeps forgetting that he is supposed to give a farewell address. He keeps returning long after he was going to get gone, and finally his son has to write cue cards for him to read on the air. Rooney seems vaguely puzzled when he discovers he has retired.

The whole thing is organized in congenial sections, decade by decade, but it’s the sort of book you can leave on your coffee table for guests to flip through. If they are adults, I can almost guarantee they’ll say, “Oh hey. I remember this!” What a wonderful ice breaker.

Highly recommended. Get it in hard cover.

Very well written and a very good read. I highly recommend this book to all who enjoy the Television Show and would like to know more about the show's fifty years of giving us a glimpse into the world of investigative journalism.

I remember watching 60 Minutes when I was a kid with my parents. It stuck with me, and I continued to watch it religiously when I became an adult. This book spans the 50 years of the show with pictures from the many interviews and all of the great reporters, many of which we have lost over the years. There is a lot of back stories that we missed when watching this show and you get to read about it in this book. Great gift for those who also love the show and have continued to watch it throughout its 50 years.