Agent Palmer

Given my interest in politics and a college minor in journalism, it’s amazing it took me this long to read All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. But it’s 50 years after its publication, and it is still a fast-paced, well-written masterpiece. 

It is a balm in troubling times that despite some of the horrors of the world, great investigative journalism was alive and well, and it could be again.

As I mentioned in my post about the Blind Date with a Bookstore, I selected to receive two books in my curated box and this is a review of those two books.

While I enjoyed both books, I did not think I could come up with enough to say about both individually to write separate reviews and honestly, since they arrived together and I read them back to back, it made sense to write about them together.

Hit Man is based on an article. That article is based on a true story written by a journalist, as is the documentary Radical Wolfe. So too are the movies Almost Famous, Live Free or Die Hard, Argo, and Top Gun.

It was those first two that I mentioned that were both released in 2023 and most importantly credited the articles they were based on. And the whole thing got me thinking…

John Feinstein’s The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball is a love letter to amateur athletics and the notion of the unironic “student” athlete. 

In the book, he chronicles the 1999-2000 Patriot League Basketball season. The Patriot League is something I guess I took for granted, as it is in my backyard. But for those who don’t know, it’s academically right up there with the Ivy League.