Molly Ivins

October 15, 2009
Molly Ivins had a voice to be reckoned with at a time when female reporters were relegated to the "women's pages." Throwing off the mantle of convention and embracing the quirky rebelliousness of her home state of Texas in the 1960s, she forged a career as an influential political columnist and social activist. Minutaglio (journalism, Univ. of Texas; "First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty") and Smith, who was a researcher for Ivins for eight years, provide a detailed account of Ivins's tumultuous personal life and successful journalism career. They show how she rebelled against her parents' conservative views and country-club lifestyle to become a lifelong champion of the First Amendment and liberal politics. The authors have gleaned insight from interviewing her family, friends, and colleagues and combing through her personal papers; unfortunately, their use of superfluous details and slang and off-color words bogs down the narrative. VERDICT Fans of Ivins's work and readers interested in feminist history, contemporary politics, and media studies will like this first full-length biography of Ivins.Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib., FL

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2009
Sturdy life of the hardworking, hard-living Texas journalist, commentator and bane of Bushes everywhere.

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) grew up privileged in Houston, and she went to the same club as the Bushes, including the one to whom she would later give the devastating nickname Shrub."People from Houston who knew both families tried to draw parallels between the Bush and Ivins households," write Minutaglio (Journalism/Univ. of Texas; City on Fire: The Forgotten Disaster That Devastated a Town and Ignited a Landmark Legal Battle, 2003, etc.) and former Ivins researcher Smith. The parallels don't seem so far-fetched, especially in the upper-class codes that all concerned were expected to keep. Shrub didn't exactly uphold those codes, and neither did Ivins, who wriggled away from class conventions to become an icon of the old media through an old-fashioned ethic of endless work and serious guzzling. Minutaglio and Smith write with a certain nostalgia for the boozy, smoke-choked, decidedly un-PG newsrooms of old, in which Ivins cut her teeth and began amassing mountains of clips, writing on topics as various as Native American rights, rock concerts and cars. Yet she would not come into her own until the'80s, when, having worked for the New York Times and many papers in Texas, she took on the Bush family as her special beat and braved Karl Rove's dirty-tricks machine. (One of them was signing Ivins up for magazine subscriptions and then sending collection agents after her for nonpayment.) The authors dip into the dangerous waters of psychobiography at a couple of points, hazarding guesses on the effect of the death of an early love and pondering the what-ifs of Ivins's persona. Yet they also offer a solid account of her development as a reporter and writer. The best part, of course, is rereading Ivins's old zingers, as when she said of a Pat Buchanan speech,"It probably sounded better in the original German."

Aspiring journalists, read this—and then get to work.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)