Rating: 
Summary: Excellent, not perfect, but still excellent
Review: Mr. Ted Koppel is easily one of the most respected journalists we have the pleasure of listening to and watching almost daily. He has honed his craft for 36 years, and has anchored "Nightline" for nearly 20 years. If peer recognition is used as a measure of his contribution and talent, 32 Emmy Awards, 6 Peabody Awards, 9 Overseas Press Awards, and several others clearly demonstrate he is held in high regard.As the book takes place in a daily entry format, it is not as fluid as more traditional prose, and Mr. Koppel clearly enjoyed having some fun while documenting the remarkable events that a successful career, that is his, entails. I refer specifically to his asides about his food shopping at Giant Supermarkets. These light diversions are at times extremely funny and serve to demonstrate a wit that I was not familiar with. Even though they reside on competing networks, he clearly could step in for Andy Rooney if the occasion arose. The thoughts recorded over the year of 1999 are in the main serious by themselves, and in the specifics of the topics he describes. He is brutally candid about an enormous range of issues, and this is the only reason I can think of that would cause some readers to not like this book. I still believe his insights are valuable even if one or more may not be in line with your own. If you are a supporter of President Clinton, you will not like this book. Mr. Koppel has strong feelings about what a President should be, what a leader is, and Mr. Clinton does not meet any of them. The Clintons evidently feel the same, as when Elie Wiesel asked that Mr. Koppel be one of his 5 friends at a dinner for him at The Whitehouse, the invitation was never sent. Though Mr. Koppel never expected the invitation to be honored, it clearly offended Mr. Wiesel, and demonstrated the pettiness that The White House can enjoy. I enjoyed the format of the book as he spoke briefly in his entries as measured by length, by expressed more understanding of his chosen topics than many books on the same subjects convey. In 3 paragraphs he flays foreign policy for the contradiction in terms it often is, and in slightly more space he demonstrates how strange the attitudes toward Mr. Clinton have been. There were a series of questions asked by pollsters, and not one was ambiguous in expressing the thoughts of those asked; "the majority (73-79%) of the American people are perfectly content to have a President whom they regard as having low moral and ethical standards, who is not a positive role model for young people and who is neither honest nor trustworthy, but who appears, figuratively speaking, to be bringing home the bacon." Former Democratic Governor of New York Mr. Mario Cuomo said, "Yeah, I wouldn't trust this guy in Church, and I wouldn't let him date my Sister, but he's a terrific President." One has to wonder which of Mr. Clinton's frailties Mr. Cuomo lacked that kept him from seeking the Presidency. We learn who he believes constitutes a leader, Winston Churchill, George Washington, and why even leaders who may have had faults, like King Hussein, were still leaders as they routinely did that which Clinton has never done, put the people they represent, their Country, ahead of themselves, their own interests. He speaks eloquently on issues of race, commenting on our taking in 20,000 refugees from the former Yugoslavia, and wondering will the same ever be the case with a similar exodus from the Continent of Africa. He says more than once that we may someday refer to the present years as the "prewar years". He also shares the little known secret that the rest of the world does not necessarily think America is quite as great as we find ourselves. Kosovo and its surroundings, and inhabitants illustrate beautifully, how our actions are perceived by those we believe we are helping. It's the old adage that perception is all that matters. The book is opinionated but not arrogant. Mr. Koppel has strong views, but he also has the first hand experience and knowledge to back his statements. You may not like some of what he has to say, but you will be hard pressed to debate and defeat him. I do find it very upsetting that so many quotes in the book have been paraded about so far from the context they were in, as to make them not only meaningless and irrelevant to how they actually appear in the book, but also are denigrating to those people who are mentioned. Mr. Koppel has strong negative feelings about the actions of some, he never wrote in the humiliating manner some of the selective outtakes of the book suggest. As I said earlier, excellent, but not perfect, however, books like this are so frustratingly rare, it is even more valuable that he took the time to write it. He did not write for the money, or for the attention. He has the former from nearly 4 decades of hard work, and the latter he has every evening. A very well informed, articulate man, who has delivered a work that is at times sobering, is thoroughly engaging, and thought provoking. Unconditionally recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Diary copied over into book with no editing.
Review: My first thought in his first couple entries was that he was trying a little to hard to be funny ala Dennis Miller or Jay Leno. However, then I realized that he wasn't, he was just blurting out his thoughts from each day (and almost every day). I feel there was not much cohesion throughout the book. He spends a lot of time on the war in Kosovo, as that was a big event during that year. However, he puts in little tidbits about his growing up and his new house or something irrelevant. Even though it was meant to be his personal thoughts on various topics, I felt he should have organized the material a little bit. On the good side, it was interesting hearing about the difficulties of being a reporter during the war, and getting some of that insider information. Similarly, it was interesting hearing his perspective from having been around for a while in the journalism business. Overall, I made it through the whole book, but every once in a while while listening to it (Audio CD version), I would think, "Now why did he include that?" I feel this work could have been improved through some editting and some thoughtful exclusions or reorganization of the material.
Rating: 
Summary: Wretched Prose Which Made me Retch
Review: Sorry to pile on, but when a book causes me to become physically ill, I feel the need to state my feelings. To simply say the book stunk would be to lead others to conclude I was merely speaking metaphorically. Not true. This book actually emitted an odor. Rarely does literature make me feel unclean but after reading this book I felt the need to shower and scrub myself raw, so as to ensure that nothing contained within it would stick to me. I have burned my clothes in a further effort to minimize the lingering effects of Mr. Koppel's "work". Once the priest comes over to perform the required exorcism I'll finally be able to go back to living my life as it was before my encounter with the pen of Ted Koppel.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore the bad reviews!
Review: Ted Koppel's Off Camera is a caring and informative view into just that, his thoughts and daily activities off camera. Mr Koppel provides us daily journal entries from the year 1999. From Monica to the strains of reporting from Kosovo. I loved reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Koppel Comments
Review: Ted Koppel, host of ABC's "Nightline" television show, presents a personal journal in which he muses on the daily events which took place during 1999. His comments range from the insightful and controversial to the personal and mundane. Among other topics, the reader will learn Koppel's thoughts on such things as the state of American journalism -"a sort of competitive screeching;" on the United States Army - more of a buraucracy than an effective fighting force; on a survey of college student's sexual attitudes - shocked that 60% don't consider oral sex as sexual relations; on the weather - irritated that forecasters have to exaggerate by including heat and wind chill indexes. The book is a quick read. It is an intimate, if somewhat tedious, look at the man millions of Americans think they know through his television persona. Those looking for a well reasoned analysis of the major events of the closing year of the century will be disappointed. Those who can take the book for what it is may find it mildly entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Koppel Comments
Review: Ted Koppel, host of ABC's "Nightline" television show, presents a personal journal in which he muses on the daily events which took place during 1999. His comments range from the insightful and controversial to the personal and mundane. Among other topics, the reader will learn Koppel's thoughts on such things as the state of American journalism -"a sort of competitive screeching;" on the United States Army - more of a buraucracy than an effective fighting force; on a survey of college student's sexual attitudes - shocked that 60% don't consider oral sex as sexual relations; on the weather - irritated that forecasters have to exaggerate by including heat and wind chill indexes. The book is a quick read. It is an intimate, if somewhat tedious, look at the man millions of Americans think they know through his television persona. Those looking for a well reasoned analysis of the major events of the closing year of the century will be disappointed. Those who can take the book for what it is may find it mildly entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: America Held Hostage: Day 254
Review: Ted Koppel. That voice, the music, the graphics. I grew into television news with Ted-- though I called him Mr. Koppel in our private, if fictional, chats about world events. From that stage, I somehow expected a giant to emerge from the pages of "Off Camera", and that giant of a man should know all and tell all because, who could do it better? This is not that sort of book. It does not gossip; it does not lie. It is Mr. Koppel, though, and he's got a great deal to let us in on. What works in this diarist's format is the jangling juxtapositions between waitng for the caller I.D. guy and musing over, "Oh, incidentally, Boris Yeltsin threatened NATO with nuclear war yesterday, if it doesn't stop bombing Yugoslavia. Everybody assumes he's kidding" (92). This sort of mingling of the mundane and the geopolitical reminds us that we cannot wholly escape either world-- it is as reckless to ignore the din of geopolitics as it is to ignore the phone bill. He's saying, "Hey! I, Mr. Big Shot Nightline Guy, have to deal with the daily dumb stuff. Why don't YOU try reading a newspaper?" And yes, he's a little testy on this. And no, he doesn't hold out much hope for what Americans have become. .... "Off Camera" is the voice of Ted Koppel: wry, commanding, knowing. There are spurts of dark humor (the moments of a life stolen while exchanging 32 cent stamps), anger, wonderment, acceptance and love. It is the writing of a journalist and the musings of a man whose sorted out his own mortality. He's a Mr. Koppel who doesn't much like President Clinton either (he'd be dishonest to say otherwise and his reasoning is solid--even though I think he's wrong). In the end, it's Ted Koppel and there are lessons to be learned. Though not a great book, this is one worth owning.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent...
Review: The diary is just that...a view to a personal side of a public person. He writes as he speaks: clearly and with an iconoclastic wit. His writings from the Balkans are his best. His views on Clinton/Lewinsky are interesting as thoughts on a work in progress.
Rating:
Summary: Do your best
Review: The only sentence I like in the whole book in on page 319: December: "There have obviously been days when my only motive has been 'to get the damned thing done.'" I think if you read this sentence first then you will enjoy reading this book more. When you read some very dry entries you will understand the frastration of a wonderful person try to do his best to finish the book project He has committed. No one else in the world would commit 365(alomost) entries and end up with a wonderful book like this,or to himself, the damned thing. His thoughts was not as sharp as he was on Nightline though. You do not read Ted himself in this book but his devoted spirit between the lines. Tell you the truth, you can find the mean part of him in this book. And he is trying to be politically correct. Is he?
Rating: 
Summary: Ted Gets Ornery
Review: The strangest myth of journalism is that in order to strive for objectivity, journalists purge themselves (or should purge themselves) of all opinions. Anyone whose ever read an article or seen a news broadcast knows that journalists have opinions, and they express them in all sorts of ways. The way Ted Koppel does in OFF CAMERA is not one of the more typical ways. Here he comments in a journal on the events of 1999, holding little back and stripping his opinions from some of the constraints and codes of his profession. All that isn't striking. What is is the degree to which Koppel is cynical about almost everything. Just about anything of public importance that catches his attention enough to make it into this journal is worthy of disparagement. Take his thoughts on the Kosovo War. At first he disparages the US's motives for getting involved, while later he seems to lament the extent to which problems there came to be ignored. He concludes before thew air war was fought that the NATO could not win that way and that a ground war was inevitable, then forgets to mention that it worked. And so on. But this is interesting. It is interesting to hear someone (Koppel's voice adds to the experience of listening to the audio book version) whose job it is to cover the news, speak with such disdain and even despair about the news. While bleak, Koppel's opinions are also interesting. He has a journalist's flair for putting a story together. I would happily read more of his commentary should he chose to write more. OFF CAMERA is not inspirational - it isn't meant to be. But it is worth hearing (or reading).
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