Lost and Found Coming of Age in the Washington Press Corps

This upbeat, funny and true story is about an American girl who found her superpowers by becoming Clark Kent. Determined to be a newspaper reporter, she discovered that the job wasn't open to girls. But she persisted, and succeeding beyond her wildest dreams, she covered some of the most tumultuous and colorful stories of her time, including the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, terrorist Sara Jane Moore's attempt to kill President Ford, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson's historic presidential campaign, and the Reagan White House. Even though she hated politics, Hume's insistence on holding the powerful accountable took her to the top of the journalism heap in Washington, where as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, she figured out how the politicians manipulated the news, and vice-versa. This tell-all memoir is, remarkably, a love story as well as a rollercoaster ride through the American news media at the height of their power. No matter how bad things looked, Hume's motto was "Don't let the past kill the future!" Hume's fairytale romance at Harvard ended with a devastating divorce, followed by a series of romantic misadventures. But at the age of 43 she embarked on the most impossible and rewarding assignment of her life: taking on a new husband and four children, all in one year.

Ellen Hume was determined to be a newspaper reporter, even though the job wasn't open to girls. Succeeding beyond her wildest dreams, she covered some of the most tumultous and colorful stories of her time. Her fairytale romance at Harvard ended with a devastating divorce, but after a series of romantic misadventures, she embarked on the most challenging assignment of her life: taking on a new husband and four children, all in one year. Hume won two honorary degrees and numerous other awards. She covered Congress for the Los Angeles Times and the White House for the Wall Street Journal. She was a commentator on PBS and CNN, research director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab, executive director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, and head of the Democracy Project at PBS. Her full bio and some of her more recent writing is on her website, www. ellenhume.com