She wraps up the primary narrative with NPR’s near bankruptcy in the 1980s even though the “founding mothers” had little to do with either causing or solving the network’s financial woes. “Regarding hiring and union matters and management issues,” writes Napoli, “they did not hold back….They weren’t women in power-though, had they wished, they could likely have seized it-they were women of power.” Though they sound like journalism’s Justice League, the author doesn’t provide adequate documentation of them springing into action together, and she dwells more on their struggles than their successes. At the time, writes the author, “there were no jobs for women or the company already ‘had its woman.’…Even women with degrees from elite schools, it seemed, attended secretarial courses after graduation in order to equip themselves for the working world.” The quartet banded together (their area of the newsroom was nicknamed the “Fallopian Jungle”) to push for change for women and minorities.

Though their early paths differed, they joined forces at NPR, overqualified and underpaid due to the widespread gender discrimination of the day. In this natural follow-up to Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News (2020), Napoli narrates the origin stories of NPR’s female journalistic superheroes: Susan Stamberg and Linda Wertheimer, who launched the network’s groundbreaking, signature show All Things Considered preeminent legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, an expert on the Supreme Court and pioneering political journalist Cokie Roberts. How four of the most important women journalists of the past five decades ended up together at the then-fledgling National Public Radio.

Founding mothers book review