BOOKS OF 2003

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, Jan/Feb 2004 by Weinberg, Steve

Vietnam-era history but one of year's best worthy of your time

One cliche of our craft goes like this: "Journalism is the first rough draft of history." But what happens when an investigative reporter decides to explore a historical topic and nails it? Do we then say the journalism that results is a second, not-so-rough, draft of history? Or do we call the finished work history, and not journalism at all?

I have been reflecting on this not only because of my roles as author, as editor and as reader, but also because of my role compiling the annual list of investigative-explanatory books starting below. I have been wrestling for years about which books belong on the list, and which would dilute the list's meaning.

One of the books I wrestled hardest with during 2003 in terms of inclusion or exclusion is also one of the most compelling, most memorable books I read.

The book is by David Maraniss, a long-time Washington Post reporter and editor who previously wrote superb biographies of contemporary controversialists Bill Clinton and Vince Lombardi. Maraniss' new book is "They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace in Vietnam and America, October 1967."

As the title suggests, much of the book explores individuals, institutions and issues from a vantage point 36 years later. Does that book belong on an investigative-explanatory reporting list?

I decided it does. Why? First, because many of the individuals Maraniss profiles are still alive. Second, all the covered institutions - especially the U.S. Army, Dow Chemical Co. and the University of Wisconsin - are influencing society every day. As for the issues of war and peace, well, they resonate in White House and Pentagon decision-making about Afghanistan, Iraq and other locales around the globe.

Maraniss' brilliant conception for the book was to examine what was occurring on a Vietnam battlefield and on a volatile American college campus on the same day during 1967. By juxtaposing the soldiers in combat and the students protesting a recruitment visit, Maraniss is able to wrestle profitably with good and evil, right and wrong, winners and losers.

One reason "They Marched Into Sunlight" belongs on the list is the investigative techniques used by Maraniss. Those techniques include locating obscure government documents, interviewing key figures over and over, visiting sites where important events occurred and reading the works of previously published journalists for context.

If Maraniss had used similar techniques to produce an important, compelling book set during World War II, would I have included it on the list? Probably, because so many World War II veterans and homefronters are still alive, and they continue to influence public policy.

I would have excluded the book from the list, however, if it had been set during World War I.

The most urgent reason 1 included Maraniss' book on the list, though, is wrapped up in thinking too seldom connected to journalism and journalists.

Professional historians and other academics hardly ever count books by journalists as scholarship. That "first rough draft of history" cliche has taken root. But Maraniss' book is scholarship at its best. Not many academic historians, for example, would have made an arduous trip to a remote area of Vietnam to view the battlefield, to interview survivors through an interpreter, to look for existing documents, diaries and newspaper accounts.

To label Maraniss' book "history" only would have been a compliment - but an insufficient one. "They Marched Into Sunlight" is history, and it is investigative journalism by a contemporary practitioner.

I hope it is one of many books from 2003 you will read after perusing the annual list.

BY STEVE WEINBERG

THE IRE JOURNAL

Steve Weinberg is senior contributing editor to The IRE Journal and a former executive director of IRE.