Another book launch night for the annals.

Bookhampton, bless that store, had UNDAUNTED generously on display in the run-up to the June 10 conversation it co-sponsored with the East Hampton Library, which featured Brooke in conversation with Lynn Sherr and Jim Rutenberg for the book’s launch in Brooke’s second home town.

Both the library and bookstore promoted it with listings in the local news outlets and on the preceding Thursday, The East Hampton Star featured it as one of two book talks taking place over the weekend, the other with William Finnegan in Montauk for his new surfing memoir.

The house was packed to a standing room overflow as Jim Rutenberg, Lynn Sherr and I told the story of women in journalism over the past 180 years in the broadest of brushstrokes. This is Kate LeCardi’s photo:

And here is the video as it appears on the East Hampton Library’s Youtube.com site:

Huge thanks again to Lynn and Jim.

Two great professional photographers, Durell Godfrey and Richard Lewin, snapped photos as Lynn and Jim shared their career reflections and I stepped in with context.

Among us we represent some 60 years of journalism history—about a third of the period the book covers, from 1840 to the present. Someone asked why 1840 is the book’s starting point and I explained it’s the common date to which the dawn of mass media is pegged.

And here is another great crowd shot, courtesy of Justin Spring

These are Durell’s photos from the library:

with Jim Rutenberg and Lynn Sherr

Note Library director Dennis Fabizak at the far right. He makes things happen.

Lynn with her photo in the book at a MORE convention in the early 1970s

with the inimitable Judith Hope

Here’s hers that appeared in the East Hampton Star June 15:

And here are some of Richard’s, including the one he slipped into the East Hampton Press for its June 15 edition:

Library director Dennis Fabizak making the introductions

Lenny Ackerman and Patti Silver

Charlie Soriano and Tippy Beaumont

Valerie Heller

Lauren Etess Schwartz and Florence Fabricant

with Billy Ghitis and Anda Andrei

Carol Mandel followed by Jamie Meltzer, buying books from author and bookseller Eve Karlin

Jim and Ondine Karady

daughter Brett Kroeger and granddaughter Maddy Weiner (on her 12th birthday and the preferred pose. Behind them I spy Amy Schaeffer

with my brother-in-law, James Goren

Jim

Lynn Sherr and Robert Zimmerman

Olivia BenSimon, an emerging reporter!

Linda Willett and Sheila Rogers, chairman of the library board

Charlotte Sasso, Margaret Farell, and Sara Davison

Henry McGee, Jan Planit, and Michael Schultz

Jean Vanderbilt and Lou Miano

Nell Scovell, Lynn Sherr, Maryann Meyer

Afterwards we headed home to celebrate. These are my iPhone snaps:

Anda Andrei

Bill Schutt

with Nell Scovell

Chuck Collins. I spy Charlie Soriano, Tippy Beaumont, and Roy Parker

Jane Singer

Michael Shultz, Vanessa Kay and daugher Olivia

Ondine and Jim Rutenberg, Magda and Ed Bleier

Susan Lehman, Margaret Carlson, Durell Godfrey

Tippy with Ellen Collins. I spy Denise Richards, Stephen Schwartz...

How to fit 100+ people in the front yard of a quarter-acre plot with house

And here are Durell’s:

with Margaret Carlson and Susan Lehman

Andrea and Donatella Ciaraldi

Pals I met at tennis: Marsha and Brian Bilsin, Steve Schwartz, Lenny Ackerman, Patti Silver, Lauren Schwartz and Lorraine Podell. Behind them, I spy Flip Brophy, Stephen Golden and Susan Tarrance, and Bruce Karp

Jacoby, Brett, Maddy with Luther, and Josh

Tippy Beaumont, Charles Soriano, Chuck Collins

Gail Parker and Lynn Sherr

With Barbara Tracey and Ellen Collins (without whom the endnotes would really be a hot mess.)

The requisite ephemera:

From the local paper 27East:

And the original call to arms, as see in Hamptons.com

Co-sponsored by Bookhampton and The East Hampton Library

Register at the Library, by calling 631-324-0222 or on Eventbrite here

BROOKE KROEGER, “UNDAUNTED” IN CONVERSATION WITH JIM RUTENBERG AND LYNN SHERR

JOIN BOOKHAMPTON FOR
AN EVENING WITH BROOKE KROEGER
AT EAST HAMPTON LIBRARY

CLICK HERE TO ATTEND

An essential history of women in American journalism, showcasing exceptional careers from 1840 to the present

Undaunted is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put in their way to do journalism’s most valued work. From Margaret Fuller’s improbable success to the highly paid reporters of the mid-nineteenth century to the breakthrough investigative triumphs of Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell, and Ida B. Wells, Brooke Kroeger examines the lives of the best-remembered and long-forgotten woman journalists. She explores the careers of standout woman reporters who covered the major news stories and every conflict at home and abroad since before the Civil War, and she celebrates those exceptional careers up to the present, including those of Martha Gellhorn, Rachel Carson, Janet Malcolm, Joan Didion, Cokie Roberts, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

As Kroeger chronicles the lives of journalists and newsroom leaders in every medium, a larger story develops: the nearly two-centuries-old struggle for women’s rights. Here as well is the collective fight for equity from the gentle stirrings of the late 1800s through the legal battles of the 1970s to the #MeToo movement and today’s racial and gender disparities.

Undaunted unveils the huge and singular impact women have had on a vital profession still dominated by men.

BROOKE KROEGER is a professor emerita at New York University, where she was the founding director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and taught from 1998 to 2021. She was UN correspondent for Newsday, deputy metropolitan editor at New York Newsday, and for more than a decade a correspondent, editor, and bureau and division chief for United Press International at home and abroad. She serves on the editorial board of American Journalism: A Journal of Media History. Undaunted is her sixth book. She lives in New York.