Never Give Up

January 1, 2023

Legendary broadcast journalist Brokaw shows where he got his grit by recalling his parents, who toughed out the Depression and World War II with equanimity. His mother Jean's farming family lost everything in the Depression, while his father, Red, left school in second grade to help support the family but acquired skills in mechanics that eventually led him to work for the Army Corps of Engineers. Inspired by Red's memoirs, recorded late in life.

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April 15, 2023
The venerable news anchor narrows the Greatest Generation to the folks back home. Born and raised in small-town South Dakota at the end of the Depression, Brokaw recounts values learned in farm fields and at the kitchen table, all distilled into the admonition of his title. The Brokaw family, erstwhile French Huguenots converted to Catholicism out on the prairie, made do with what they had. Emblematic of their grit was Brokaw's father, known as Red for his fiery hair, who began to work as a frontier factotum at the age of 8 and, on the side, did a little bare-knuckle fighting. "It was the beginning of an adventurous working-class life," writes the author, "that lifted Red to heights he could not have imagined as a youngster working on difficult prairie projects." He moved on from descending into crumbling holes to clear wells to helping build one of the country's largest dams. "His unspoken guide to life," Brokaw reiterates, "was never give up, never complain." It was the kind of regime guaranteed to send a person to an early grave, but it afforded Brokaw the wherewithal to get an education and start out on a journalism career that would eventually land him at the top of his profession. With no false sentimentality, the author also celebrates his mother, who seemed able to do just about anything around the home but also "taught her sons to do laundry and ironing" and was a whirlwind of an organizer for the Democratic Party. With his customary evenhanded tone, Brokaw voices a few regrets, including not quite understanding at the time how the anti-Vietnam War movement, mostly populated by people who had deferments and weren't going to fight anyway, alienated old-school liberals such as Brokaw's dad and "played right into the fury of working-class Americans." Brokaw pays homage to the sacrifices of his parents' generation--and finds their successors wanting by comparison.

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April 17, 2023
In this affable memoir, former NBC Nightly News anchor Brokaw (The Fall of Richard Nixon) draws a line from his parents’ perseverance through world wars and the Great Depression through to his own values. “I thank God for their enduring legacy of quiet courage and common persistence,” he writes, focusing especially on the latter. Brokaw recounts Red and Jean’s courtship and reflects on the work ethic he gleaned from them, masterfully bringing them to life through fond recollections—he writes of his mother excitedly waking him the morning after Harry Truman won the 1948 presidential election (to which he attributes his “lifelong journalistic passion for politics”) as if it happened yesterday, and touchingly recalls a radio tribute to his father on the day of his funeral, effectively giving the talkative Red “the last word” on his own life. Photographs woven throughout the text, including an image of Red’s watch with a small picture of Jean on the face, further enhance the sense of tenderness. Brokaw constructs this memorable family history with all the concision and color of a good journalistic profile. It’s hard not to be moved.

May 1, 2023
After The Fall of Richard Nixon (2019), renowned newsman Brokaw returns to personal history in the latest of his autobiographical works, paying loving homage to two of the Greatest Generation he has famously celebrated, his parents, Red and Jean. With an economy of words but a wealth of emotion, Brokaw evokes his parents' hardscrabble childhoods, their solid and storied marriage, and their struggles to create a secure home for a growing family while confronting the challenges of the Great Depression and WWII. But for Brokaw, his parents' quintessentially Midwestern work ethic didn't seem to be borne of insurmountable strife. Instead, he learned there was nothing that couldn't be mastered by his father's enduring philosophy that inspired the book's title. Such a "can do, must do" attitude informed not only Brokaw's illustrious career but, he argues, is foundational to the country's success. As the U.S. now faces existential challenges to its national character, Brokaw's candid and heartfelt memoir offers a timely reflection infused with his trademark sincerity and unabashed appreciation for the bedrock inspirational values that always deserve attention.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Brokaw's deep and affirming perspective make him a reader favorite.

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