Audition

Barbara Walters spent more than forty years interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals and murderers. Here she turns the same scrutiny on herself. Young people entering television often tell her they want to be her, and her answer is that they must accept the whole package. This memoir sets out that package.

Her outlook took shape in childhood. Her father, Lou Walters, owned the Latin Quarter nightclub and was its creative force, and his appetite for risk showed her how fortunes can rise and fall. Money worries, fear and love in the family all fed into her later choices, from the friendships she formed to the relationships she had and the marriages she tried to hold together.

Drive and a fair measure of luck carried her into television, where she rose to the top of an industry dominated by men, against heavy odds. The book follows that climb alongside her private life, and it treats both with the same frankness.

It is a memoir written in the first person by a celebrated broadcast journalist. She frames a lifetime of proving herself as one long audition, and this account is her last. The tone moves between sad and funny, with some surprises along the way.