“Marvin Kalb’s great new book Assignment Russia is a rollicking and engaging memoir that takes you to the front lines of the Cold War, to a mic in the early days of broadcast news, and into the mind and career of one of ‘Murrow’s Boys.’ It’s an important book from a legend in journalism, a book you can’t put down.”
—Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent

“A fascinating memoir of Marvin Kalb’s Cold War adventures as he sought to penetrate the mysteries of Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Russia while building his career as one of broadcast journalism’s legends.”
—Jack Matlock, U.S. ambassador to Russia (1987–1991)

“Marvin Kalb’s engaging Assignment Russia is like Hamilton’s ‘The Room Where It Happens.’ It is a delightful narrative of Kalb’s personal encounters with some of the most famous characters of the 1950s and 1960s, like CBS’s legendary Edward R. Murrow, who hired Kalb, or Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who nicknamed him ‘Peter the Great.’ It is also an engrossing memoir of a foreign correspondent’s adventures in the enemy camp during the Cold War. I loved it, I learned from it, and, I dare say, had fun reading it.”
—Lesley Stahl, co-anchor, CBS’s 60 Minutes

“It is impossible to put this engrossing book down—it illuminates so many dark corners of the Cold War. With a master correspondent’s insight, skepticism, sensitivity, and great clarity, Kalb brings vividly to life all the hopes and fears of the most consequential foe this nation has had.”
—Ken Burns, filmmaker

“A nostalgic treat for older readers. . . a wake-up call for younger ones.”
—Edward Kosner, The Wall Street Journal

“Kalb’s fond, generous memoir, which vividly delineates a bygone era of early journalism, will appeal to students of 20th-century American history as well as aspiring broadcast journalists. The author was involved in many significant Cold War moments, and he brings us directly into that world.
Hopefully Kalb is back at his desk; readers will be eager for the next volume.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“In Assignment Russia: Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War, Kalb, now 90 years old, effectively transports the reader to a historical period that will soon be lost to living memory. His narrative offers behind-the-scenes glimpses into the functioning of journalism and diplomacy in a three-year period when both were undergoing sea changes.”
—Kathryn J. McGarr, The Washington Post

“Marvin Kalb is a great storyteller with a great story to tell.”—Dan Rather

The chilliest years of the Cold War marked the entrance of a young man who would go on to become one of America’s preeminent diplomatic correspondents. Handpicked by the legendary Edward R. Murrow to join the ranks of an esteemed news network that was just beginning to enter a new world of televised news broadcasting, Marvin Kalb takes readers back to his first days as a journalist, and what also were the first days of broadcast news.

The world in the late 1950s was a tense geopolitical drama of Eisenhower’s America, Khrushchev’s Russia, and Mao’s China. Mistrust and strategic calculation governed international relations. Kalb, who had left his graduate work in Russian studies at Harvard at Murrow’s call for him to join the ranks of CBS News, brought a scholar’s appreciation for history and objective research to his newrole as a journalist who explained and explored this new postwar world.

It was also a new world of journalism, brought by camera into viewers’ homes. The difficulties of conveying news not only by image but by word—and doing so on deadline, with minimal resources, and in a hostile environment—are alive in Kalb’s engaged and vivid writing. He calls his book a “long letter home” and Assignment Russia reads with that kind of color and honesty.

Kalb joins a cast of legendary figures in telling this story of the early days of the Cold War and broadcast news, from Murrow to Eric Severeid, Howard K. Smith, Richard Hottelet, Charles Kuralt, and Daniel Schorr, among many others—men like himself who became household names and trusted guides to a tension-filled world.