The Noise of Typewriters

“Terrific!” —Gay Talese, author of The Kingdom and the Power “With his preternatural memory, powerful prose, and puckish wit, Lance Morrow brilliantly evokes the highs and lows of twentieth century journalism.  He revisits the big stories and creates unforgettable portraits of influential characters, chief among them TIME’s founder Henry Luce, ‘a preeminent American mythmaker’ with ‘a warlord’s air.’ Luce, Morrow writes, ‘had a way of being vindicated by the passage of years.’  This engrossing and highly original book asks hard questions, doesn’t flinch from discomfiting answers, and offers insights for our times. As he writes, ‘Be tolerant of chaos. Be patient. Wait for stillness.’” —Sally Bedell Smith, author of George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy   ""This sort of writing is the reason that Morrow is in that exceedingly small club of journalists worth rereading. One looks in vain online these days for anything even close to this kind of prose. This is not the language of the ephemera of the internet."" —Gregory J. Sullivan, America Magazine “Don’t judge a book by its cover? Perhaps, but judge Lance Morrow’s by its wonderful, somewhat elegiac title. This history-cum-memoir by one of journalism’s most admired practitioners is packed with anecdotes and vignettes that are as illuminating as they are entertaining. It is a brisk reminder of the way the news business, and the nation, were not long ago.” —George F. Will ""This sort of writing is the reason that Morrow is in that exceedingly small club of journalists worth rereading. One looks in vain online these days for anything even close to this kind of prose. This is not the language of the ephemera of the internet.""