100 Books Like Panic as Man Burns Crumpets

When I left university, I wanted to know why journalists bother working in jobs where they are frequently abused, badly paid, and work long hours. I never considered journalism a career until I saw an advert for a post in the Chatham News.

I wanted to know more, so I found a second-hand copy of Journey Into Journalism by Arnold Wesker. He'd been allowed to spend a year at the Sunday Times, then edited by the legendary Harold Evans, to help him write his play The Journalists. He had so much leftover that he wrote this book, which answered the question I had: "Why do journalists do it?" He answered it correctly, but you must read it to know why.

As a foreign correspondent based in Vienna, I'm often asked to arrange interviews for reporters flying in from London. I remember a journalist from the Sun newspaper who flew in and wanted a translator. I found a local book author, but he canceled when he found out it was for the Sun. The journalist asked him why, and he said, "You wouldn't understand."

But that journalist had a first-class honors degree in literature from Oxford. Of all the types of journalism, tabloid is reviled, yet it attracts the best journalists. It starts the ball rolling on the best stories, and in its purest form, it is never about fake news; it's about taking on the biggest bully in the playground. I love it, and this book is pure tabloid.

The stories my agencies create have probably appeared in some form in every major and most minor publications worldwide. A single-viral story can be repeated thousands of times in the media landscape. But no publication that we work for has paid as much as the Daily Mail. It may be hated by many, but journalists love it. It pays the best rates, and this book was a fascinating insight into my biggest customer.

My work for them was what made me a target of BuzzFeed because not only is it hated in some quarters, but it's the biggest news organization in the world, and many want to see it toppled. The book also featured many people I knew, like the legendary Allan Hall, who once punched the editor.

At the end of a busy day, which is always almost 12 hours long, it is often difficult to wind down, and a David Gemmell book with its inspirational lessons was always perfect until the books ran out. Rereading them can only be done so many times, and reluctantly, I decided to try one of the two books he wrote in a genre I am never usually interested in.

Many people forget that he used to be a journalist and wrote two books that draw on that experience, but this one is by far my favorite. The PR blurb fails to mention that at the heart of this story, it is about propaganda in the media, and Gemmell is a master storyteller. His journalism experience makes it highly authentic in his portrayal of local journalism struggling to survive, and if you are a Gemmell sword and sorcery fan, you will… show more.

From the country’s capital, the city’s journalists translated political power and social news – as well as a thriving social scene. They covered stories that were shared across the country. A mix of men and women, big names and freelancers, these journalists reveals behind-the-scenes reporting and relationships. The stories reveal how and why news is made. These watchdogs of government were often intertwined with politicians professionally and sometimes personally. This book offers a helpful understanding of Washington, D.C. journalism – and is highly entertaining.

Brilliant Bylines is more than a historical narrative of women in journalism, as it also includes samples of the women's writings.

My favorite is Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known as "Nellie Bly." She was not unknown, but she was mysterious in her own way and certainly was intriguing. Not only did she travel around the world in 1890, but she also feigned mental illness in order to get the inside scoop on an insane asylum. I named another cat after her, as well.

If fictional journalists are your thing, then this book will almost certainly introduce you to some you’ve never heard of as well as those you (really should) have. Lonsdale insightfully identifies and dissects themes that crop up time after time in creative writing about journalists, from swashbuckling rogues to unethical scumbags. In the process, she has plenty to say about the craft of journalism itself and its enduring value to society. There is humour too, as when she quotes the immortal line of Stella Gibbons (author of Cold Comfort Farm): "The life of the journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. So is his style." Lovely.

Before Life there was the Saturday Evening Post, a roaring success capturing the spirit of Middle America at a time when Middle America defined the cultural ethos of the nation. But by the late 1950s the potent reach of television advertising undermined the general-interest magazine business model, and the Post slipped into an inexorable spiral of decline that its top executives could never quite handle or even understand. There’s plenty of pathos and human drama as they struggle with forces beyond their control. 

The book Out on Assignment examines the careers of overlooked women who wrote for major metropolitan newspapers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Using archival materials, Alice Fahs describes a community of female journalists from numerous American cities. These newspaper women were part of a wave of women seeking a journalism career although their options were often limited. Although a few female journalists found hard-news reporting jobs in stunt work and undercover assignments, most found work in the women’s pages.

In these sections, they interviewed celebrities, advice columns, and suffrage news. Very little research has been done on women’s page journalism; this book provides an excellent foundation.

This book helped crystallize something I’ve long suspected: that democracy’s strength—its openness—is also its greatest vulnerability. Gershberg and Illing don’t just chart the rise of populist rhetoric or disinformation; they go deeper, showing how the evolution of media itself has upended the cultural foundations of democratic life.

Their argument that “media ecology is the master political science” felt especially resonant. It’s not just what we know—it’s how we come to know it, and how that process can be gamed. If you want to understand why democratic institutions feel so unstable today, this is one of the sharpest diagnoses I’ve read.