Eric Sevareid Popular Books

Eric Sevareid Biography & Facts

Arnold Eric Sevareid (November 26, 1912 – July 9, 1992) was an American author and CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977. He was one of a group of elite war correspondents who were hired by CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow and nicknamed "Murrow's Boys." Sevareid was the first to report the Fall of Paris in 1940, when the city was captured by German forces during World War II. Sevareid followed in Murrow's footsteps as a commentator on the CBS Evening News for thirteen years, for which he was recognized with Emmy and Peabody Awards. Early life Sevareid was born in central North Dakota at Velva to Alfred Eric and Clara Pauline Elizabeth Sevareid (née Hougen). The town's economy was largely dependent on wheat farming. According to Sevareid, his neighbors were extremely charitable towards friends but very wary of outsiders; it was an egalitarian but politically conservative community. After the failure of the bank in Velva in 1925, his family moved to nearby Minot, and then to Minneapolis, Minnesota, settling on 30th Avenue North. He attended Central High School in Minneapolis. Sevareid graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1935. A descendant of Norwegian immigrants, he preserved a strong bond with Norway throughout his life. Sevareid was adventurous from a young age; several days after he graduated from Central High School in 1930, he and his friend Walter Port embarked on an expedition sponsored by the Minneapolis Star to travel by canoe from Minneapolis to York Factory, on Hudson Bay. They canoed up the Minnesota River and its tributary, the Little Minnesota River, to Browns Valley, portaged to Lake Traverse, and descended the Bois des Sioux River to the Red River of the North, which led to Lake Winnipeg. They then went down the Nelson River, Gods River, and Hayes River to Hudson Bay, a trip of 2,250 miles (3,620 km). Sevareid's book Canoeing with the Cree (1935) was the result of this canoe trip and is still in print. Early career At age 18, Sevareid entered journalism as a reporter for the Minneapolis Journal while he was a student at the University of Minnesota in political science. At the Journal, he wrote a five-part series on the Silver Shirts. He was disappointed with the way the editors portrayed the organization as ridiculous rather than a legitimate political threat. He received many personal threats of physical force in response to the story, but believed that the people issuing them were too cowardly to follow through. He continued his studies abroad, first in London, and then at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he also worked as an editor for United Press. Sevareid then became city editor of the Paris Herald Tribune, and later joined CBS as a foreign correspondent based in Paris. Sevareid broadcast the Fall of Paris and followed the French government from there to Bordeaux and then Vichy before he left France for London and later Washington, D.C. He was appointed as CBS's Washington bureau chief in July 1942. He wrote about the Plains influence on his life in his early memoir, Not So Wild A Dream (1946). The book is still in print and covers his life in Velva, his family, the Hudson Bay trip, his hitchhiking around the U.S., mining in the Sierra Nevada, the Great Depression years, his early journalism, and (especially) his experiences in World War II. Wartime reporting Relationship with Edward Murrow Sevareid's work during World War II, with Edward Murrow as one of the original Murrow's Boys, was at the forefront of broadcasting. In 1940, he was the first to report on the Fall of France. Shortly afterward, he joined Murrow to report on the Battle of Britain. Later, Sevareid would refer fondly to the early years working with Murrow: "We were like a young band of brothers in those early radio days with Murrow." In his final broadcast with CBS, in 1977, he would call Murrow the man who "invented me." Rescue in Burma On August 2, 1943, Sevareid was on board a Curtiss-Wright C-46 Commando that, having taken off from Assam in India, developed engine trouble over Burma while it was on a Hump airlift mission. He grabbed a bottle of Carew's gin before he parachuted out of the plane. The U.S. Army Air Forces formed a search and rescue team to bring the group out from behind enemy lines. The operatives parachuted in, located the party, and evacuated them safely to India, for which John Paton Davies Jr. later won the Medal of Freedom. Davies was a U.S. diplomat who, having been a passenger himself, initially led the group away from the crash site and out of harm's way before the rescuers arrived. Yugoslavia In Yugoslavia, Sevareid later reported on Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav Partisans. Later career After the war, Sevareid continued to work for CBS. He had begun his own program, Eric Sevareid and the News, on June 27, 1942, on CBS; it ran for five minutes, starting at 8:55 (ET) on Saturdays and Sundays. In 1946, he reported on the founding of the United Nations and then penned Not So Wild a Dream (University of Missouri Press, 1946). The book, whose title comes from part of the closing passage of Norman Corwin's radio play "On a Note of Triumph," appeared in eleven printings and became one of the primary sources on the lives of the generation of Americans who had lived through the Great Depression, only to confront the horrors of World War II. In the 1976 edition of the book, Sevareid wrote, "It was a lucky stroke of timing to have been born and lived as an American in this last generation. It was good fortune to be a journalist in Washington, now the single news headquarters in the world since ancient Rome. But we are not Rome; the world is too big, too varied." Sevareid always considered himself a writer first and often felt uneasy behind a microphone and even less comfortable on television. Nonetheless, he worked extensively for CBS News on television for decades after the war. During the middle and the end of 1950s, Sevareid found himself on television as the host and science reporter of CBS's Conquest. He also served as the head of the CBS Washington bureau from 1946 to 1954 and was one of the early critics of Joseph McCarthy's anticommunism tactics. European correspondent Sevareid wound up the 1950s as CBS's roving European correspondent from 1959 to 1961. He contributed stories to CBS Reports during that time and served as moderator on a number of CBS series such as Town Meeting of the World, The Great Challenge, Where We Stand, and Years of Crisis. Sevareid also appeared in or on CBS coverage of every presidential election from 1948 to 1976, the year before his retirement. Final interview with Adlai Stevenson One of Sevareid's biggest scoops from this time period was his 1965 exclusive interview with Adlai Stevenson II shortly before Stevenson's death. The interview was not broadcast over CBS but instead appeared in Look magazine. CBS Evening News appearances On November 22, 1963, Sevareid joined Walter Cronkite on CBS television w.... Discover the Eric Sevareid popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Eric Sevareid books.