Hewitt started out as an aggressive, hustling journalist, young enough to take any job and hungry enough to work hard. During World War II he covered the Merchant Marine, which got him assigned to cover plans for D-Day. Mostly, though, he had the happy young Yank's experiences of living in London. He offers an enormous number of entertaining stories about them, from Lyndon Baines Johnson and Frank Sinatra to Laurence Olivier. Fred was now my boss and acted like nothing good had ever happened in television until he got there.
Most people can relate to that situation.
Hewitt made lemonade of his dilemma by creating 60 Minutes . It is fascinating to read about people's ideas, good and bad, and about how often someone said no to good ones. While these stories are fun to read, Hewitt acknowledges that he told many of them in his first memoir 20 years ago. Perhaps a key reason he has written this one is to address what he sees as a giant smear on his professional history in connection with Jeffrey Wigand, a whistle-blower who brought to light some of the tobacco industry's dark secrets. 60 Minutes had the story first, but CBS lawyers temporarily got the piece shelved, over the furious protests of producer Lowell Bergman.