Alisyn Camerota figures she’s got two books in her.
The host (along with Chris Cuomo) of CNN’s New Day has written the first, “Amanda Wakes Up.” She’ll discuss it and the crazy world of journalism when she settles in for a talk at the Arizona Daily Star’s tent at the Tucson Festival of Books.
The eclectic line-up includes authors who have written about historic events, historic people, romance and self-improvement. And there’s humor thrown in there, too.
Camerota, who talks at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 10, stuck with what she knows for “Amanda Wakes Up:” cable news.
“I thought it would be entertaining to have the curtain pulled back on cable news,” she says in a phone interview from Florida, where she was covering the students who survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The book is a breezy tale about a young reporter fighting to make a mark on a national network run by a man who is obsessed with ratings. Among the characters we meet are a political candidate with a Hollywood background and no experience in politics, and the woman he is running against, a senator who knows her way around Washington.
Yes, it sounds as though it could be our most recent presidential race.
But Camerota, who spent 16 years at Fox News before joining CNN in 2014, began to write it during the 2012 campaign.
“I started writing it because I was troubled by what I was seeing in journalism,” she says. “I was already seeing people who were masquerading as journalists but were TV personalities. I was seeing people confused about news programs and entertainment.”
So after a long day covering candidates such as Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain (one of the favorites of her Fox boss, Roger Ailes), she’d go home and jot down notes. They became the beginnings of her book.
She wasn’t interested in writing a lecture on journalism. While the ethical dilemmas are there, Camerota spins a tale that also includes romance, humor, and the frenzy that happens when the cameras aren’t rolling.
And the second book she has in her? She laughs and says “It’s a teenage memoir about when I fell in love with punk rock.”
While Camerota’s book is light fiction, Jonathan Eig‘s “Ali: A Life,” is serious non-fiction. Eig spent four years writing the book, and conducted 600 interviews with more than 200 people.
It is an exhaustive study, taking the reader from Cassius Clay’s birth to Mohammed Ali’s death in 2016.
As a kid, Eig idolized the boxer.
“When I was older, I learned how much more interesting his life was,” says Eig in a phone interview from his Chicago home.
“His story covered so many important issues — race, religion, politics, head injuries. It was one of the richest life stories.”
Plenty of books have been written about Ali, but most “took slices,” he says. “No one had done a big one yet.”
“Ali” is a can’t-put-down read, a compelling biography that gives a complete portrait of the man and the times. Eig, a journalist with five books to his credit, wasn’t going to sugarcoat the fighter. Ali could be a jerk, was dreadful to women, and barely knew his kids. But he was also a gentle, thoughtful man with a big heart and a deep commitment to his convictions. The reader is taken on a roller coaster — you are horrified one minute, completely charmed the next.
Eig found himself on that same roller coaster.
“I was really worried that readers wouldn’t like him,” he says. “That I wouldn’t like him. Some things he said were unforgivable. The emotions were so extreme at times.”
Ali’s rise began in 1960, when he won an Olympic gold medal in the light heavyweight division. The decade was thick with drama: racism, war, assassinations, all of which helped shape Ali.
The hits to the head took a toll on the fighter. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s Syndrome, he was eventually confined to a wheelchair. Eig touches on the destructive side of boxing, even going so far as to count how many times Ali was hit over the years and talking to doctors about the impact those had on his health.
Eig’s talk, “Muhammad Ali: From Hated to Greatest,” is slated for 10 a.m. Sunday, March 11.
Air flight is at the center of books by two of the authors speaking at the Star tent: Dan Hampton‘s “The Flight: Charles Lindbergh’s Daring and Immortal 1927 Transatlantic Crossing” and “Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon,” by Jeffrey Kluger.
Hampton, a historian and one-time U.S. Air Force pilot, whisks us back to 1927 and plops us into the claustrophobic cockpit of “The Spirit of St. Louis,” the plane Lindbergh used to break a world record in his solo New York-to-Paris flight.
Much has been written about Lindbergh, but few put us on the plane with him. Hampton did just that — you can feel the cold, his occasional confusion and the tension that accompanied almost every minute of the flight.
Hampton will talk at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, March 10.
Kluger, a Time magazine senior editor for science and technology, knows how to tell a good story.
In “Apollo 8,” he puts the first manned flight around the moon in context. It is 1968. The Russians are beating the United States in space travel, political unrest is rampant, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy are both assassinated. The country longed for a piece of good news.
The flight, which launched Dec. 21 of that year, gave the country what it needed.
Kluger interviewed all three astronauts on that flight: Jim Lovell, William Anders, and Frank Borman, a Tucsonan who graduated from Tucson High School. Kluger also had access to NASA transcripts of the flight. The book never resorts to jargon and is packed with all the drama and joy of the flight — both preparing for it and during it.
Kluger talks about the book at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, March 10.
Amy Herman has spent years teaching employees at such places as the FBI, Planned Parenthood and Seventh Day Adventist Church how to hone their observation skills.
Her book, “Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life,” allows readers to do the same. It is, basically, a book form of her much-lauded “The Art of Perception” lectures. She uses works of art to teach the art of observation. Here’s how compelling it is: Fox has optioned the book and a television show is in development
Herman is a lawyer, an art historian, and president of the New York City-based professional development organization, The Art of Perception.
She will speak at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, March 11.
But first, at 4 p.m. Saturday, she will be joined by Michael J. Gelb, author of “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day,” for a discussion called “Seeing What Matters: Perception, Creativity and Leonardo da Vinci.” Their focus will be on the use of art to gain the skills needed to lead more productive and creative lives.
These are trying times, humor is essential to weather them.
You’ll find that in Jim Borgman and Jerry Scott, the creators of “Zits” comic strip; humorist Michael Perry, and Star editorial cartoonist David Fitzsimmons.
Borgman and Scott created “Zits” 21 years ago. When it debuted, more than 200 newspapers ran it. In 1998, the Star added it to its comic pages, where it continues to run today.
At its center is a gawky teen who is full of all the angst, insecurities and rebellions that most teens have. Which drives his parents nuts. Their talk, “Don’t Expect Any Leftovers: Living with Teenagers,” is at 1 p.m. Sunday March 11.
More laughs are in store right after that: Humorist Michael Perry talks at 2:30 p.m. March 11.
The author of the bestselling “Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time,” credits a kidney stone for his newest book of essays, “Montaigne in Barn Boots.” He was at the hospital and suffering through the passing of a kidney stone when he came across Montaigne’s name. Montaigne is a 16th century French philosopher who is often credited with creating the essay form.
He also had kidney stones. That gave him common ground with Perry, who began to research and read Montaigne, the writer of philosophical essays about everything from his kidney stones to his thumb to marriage. In “Montaigne in Barn Boots,” Perry ambles through some of those essays with the perspective of a 21st century guy. A sometimes actor, Perry will give a live interpretation of the book.
And finishing out the book fest at 4 p.m. March 11 will be Fitzsimmons. He and his co-host Dave Devine will test you: on the book festival, Tucson trivia, and who knows what else. There will be prizes. And plenty of laughs. Fitzsimmons will also sign copies of his book, “Fitzsimmons: 30 Years of Cartooning.”
