We are delighted to welcome you back to this in person event at our Manchester, VT store!

Author Ellen Hume will discuss her fascinating memoir, which details her career and work to break the gender barrier in national journalism. Hume covered some of the most tumultuous and colorful stories of her time, including the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, terrorist Sara Jane Moore’s attempt to kill President Ford, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson’s historic presidential campaign, and the Reagan White House.

This upbeat, funny and true story is about an American girl who found her superpowers by becoming Clark Kent. Determined to be a newspaper reporter, she discovered that the job wasn’t open to girls. But she persisted, and succeeding beyond her wildest dreams, she covered some of the most tumultuous and colorful stories of her time, including the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, terrorist Sara Jane Moore’s attempt to kill President Ford, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson’s historic presidential campaign, and the Reagan White House. Even though she hated politics, Hume’s insistence on holding the powerful accountable took her to the top of the journalism heap in Washington, where as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, she figured out how the politicians manipulated the news, and vice-versa. This tell-all memoir is, remarkably, a love story as well as a rollercoaster ride through the American news media at the height of their power. No matter how bad things looked, Hume’s motto was “Don’t let the past kill the future!” Hume’s fairytale romance at Harvard ended with a devastating divorce, followed by a series of romantic misadventures. But at the age of 43 she embarked on the most impossible and rewarding assignment of her life: taking on a new husband and four children, all in one year.

Ellen Hume is the recipient of two honorary degrees and numerous other awards. She covered Congress for the Los Angeles Times and the White House for the Wall Street Journal. She was a commentator on PBS and CNN, research director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab, executive director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, and head of the Democracy Project at PBS.

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