The House that Roone Built: The Inside Story of ABC News

When Roone Arledge became president of ABC News in 1977, he took over a second-rate news organization that lacked the reputation, ratings and star power of its well-established competitors, CBS News and ABC News.

Arledge, who had made his name as an innovative producer of sports, went on to develop bold new ways of delivering news with such programs as Nightline, 20/20, This Week and Prime Time Live, and to assemble a galaxy of stars: Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Sam Donaldson and David Brinkley.

Published in 1994 by Little Brown, The House that Roone Built: The Inside Story of ABC News tells the dramatic story of Arledge’s rise and fall from power. A complex, brilliant and difficult man, Arledge had an enormous impact on television. He died in 2003.

Monday Night Mayhem: The Inside Story of ABC’s Monday Night Football

Since ABC introduced Monday Night Football to television in 1970, Monday nights in America have never been the same. Published in 1988 by William Morrow, Monday Night Mayhem: The Inside Story of ABC’s Monday Night Football tells the entertaining story of how ABC and the NFL together turned an otherwise ordinary football game into a national institution with a faithful following of millions.

I wrote Monday Night Mayhem with my friend Bill Carter, the longtime TV reporter for The New York Times. The book offers a revealing look at some of the most colorful and influential figures in the television industry, notably Roone Arledge, the inventive genius behind the success of ABC Sports and Howard Cosell, the controversial, bombastic star whose powerful personality dominated, and then disrupted, the show.

Monday Night Mayhem was made into a TNT cable movie in 2002. John Turturro played Cosell, John Heard played Arledge and Eli Wallach played ABC chairman Leonard Goldenson.

Basepaths: From the Minor Leagues to the Majors and Beyond

Basepaths: From the Minor Leagues to the Majors and Beyond is my first book. Published in 1984 by Scribner and written for young adults, Basepaths is about baseball players and their careers. Some of the players were famous stars (Jim ‘Catfish’ Hunter, Bill White, Ferguson Jenkins), some were unknown and most were in between. Each was chosen to represent a stage of a baseball career, from beginning to retiree.

These players had just one thing in common—a willingness to talk to an ordinary fan about what they do. Basepaths is about baseball, but it is also about the pursuit of excellence. These are stories about people who are striving to be the best at what they do.