A Bus of My Own

Whether the subject is a hilarious NewsHour near-disaster or a personal crisis, Jimmy Charles Lehrer’s life makes terrific copy. His consuming passion for the great days of the intercity bus line; his youthful dreams, losses and embarrassments, his picaresque career as a reporter interviewing murderers, con men, Cardinals, and Elvis; his entry into public television; his observations on journalistic ethics, back-roads America, and the JFK assassination (to which Lehrer had an unusual front row seat); his foolproof method to stop smoking (have a heart attack); his lifelong hunger to possess “a bus of my own”–all percolate with the candor and wit that are Jim Lehrer’s trademarks. This memoir will have readers thinking, chortling, even getting misty-eyed, and will be remembered long after the final page has been turned.