by Susan Page
First published 2024
Barbara Walters dominated television news for five decades, but her public success masked private struggles that drove her relentless ambition. Susan Page draws from 150 interviews and deep archival research to uncover the forces that shaped the most successful female broadcaster in history. The story begins with Walters' father, a mercurial impresario whose suicide attempt left the family financially unstable and Barbara perpetually fearful of catastrophe. This fear pushed her to demand what no woman had asked for before in the male-dominated world of television news. Page traces how Walters expanded and then ruled the big TV interview format, speaking with more famous and infamous figures than any journalist in history. At sixty-seven, when most female broadcasters faced forced retirement, she created The View and pioneered a new form of talk television. The biography reveals the calculated risks Walters took to reinvent television interviews, the secrets she guarded about her complicated marriages and love life, and how her personal demons became the engine for breaking barriers that gave women permanent standing in broadcast journalism.
Genres: biography, 20th-century, non-fiction, 21st-century, journalism
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: barrier-breaking, overcoming-adversity, pioneering-woman
Period: 20th Century, 21st Century
464 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster