About the Author
Katy Tur is an American broadcast journalist and author, who has received in 2017 the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. She followed President Donald Trump's campaign from its inception to the end, enduring all kinds of criticisms and oddities along the way, which she recounts in show more her best selling book, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History. show less
Image credit: Katy Tur/by Sasha Arutyunova for The New York Times
Works by Katy Tur
Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History (2017) 675 copies, 39 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Tur, Katharine Bear
- Birthdate
- 1983-10-26
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of California, Santa Barbara (BA - Philosophy)
- Occupations
- journalist
media journalist - Organizations
- MSNBC
- Short biography
- Katharine Bear Tur (born October 26, 1983) is an American author and broadcast journalist working as correspondent for NBC News. Tur is an anchor for MSNBC Live and has reported for the NBC news platforms Early Today, Today, NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, WNBC-TV, MSNBC, and The Weather Channel.
Tur was the [NBC's] embedded reporter for the Donald Trump presidential campaign. She was responsible for informing the Trump campaign about the Access Hollywood tape that NBC possessed.
Several times during his campaign rallies, Trump singled out Tur in his criticism of the press. At an event in Florida, Tur was booed by Trump supporters and, according to other journalists, was subjected to verbal harassment. According to Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, "[Trump] didn't mean it in any malicious way", and he did not want anyone to attack or harass her.
Katy Tur in Wikipedia - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
New York, New York, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Katy Tur, a NBC News correspondent, has a much stronger constitution than I have and a much better stomach. If I had to spend 500 days, with Donald J. Trump, I would have contemplated ending my life.
Tur was handed this assignment in 2015 but never thought Trump would survive the duration but she slowly became aware of his rising, cult-like popularity and soon had the unsettling feeling he was going to win it all.
This is not an easy read, as Tur describes all the distasteful horrors that show more unfolded during these baffling and horrifying months, but it is a highly entertaining narrative and I have an immense appreciation of Tur's tenacity, sense of humor and clever insight. show less
Tur was handed this assignment in 2015 but never thought Trump would survive the duration but she slowly became aware of his rising, cult-like popularity and soon had the unsettling feeling he was going to win it all.
This is not an easy read, as Tur describes all the distasteful horrors that show more unfolded during these baffling and horrifying months, but it is a highly entertaining narrative and I have an immense appreciation of Tur's tenacity, sense of humor and clever insight. show less
It possibly wasn’t my smartest decision ever to read Unbelievable on the eve of the U.S. elections, or at the hairdresser but it felt right. Reading this as the world watched and waited (and waited) for the outcome of the election gave me more insight into the U.S. system and Trump and his supporters.
Katy Tur joined the Trump 2016 campaign from its earliest beginnings and followed it through to that election. Her story describes what it’s like to be on the road for a year and half show more (spoiler: you will get sick of takeaway, hotels and airports). It also describes how a small following became huge, with rallies on the tarmac at airports, fancy dinners for high spending donors and a lot of waiting, followed by a lot of rushing around. Trump called Katy out specifically a number of times during the campaign (at one point the Secret Service escorted her out at the end of an event), sometimes with a compliment but usually not. The book gets quite personal at times, as Katy finds it difficult in comparison with what she’s given up to follow Trump around the country. It also goes into her background, which was useful for me because this Aussie doesn’t have access to NBC.
The book is light hearted in tone generally and very easy to read. You don’t need to be an expert in U.S. politics or know every player (although some names I know from the four years that followed). The story starts on election night and then goes back to the initial campaign. As the campaign heats up, the election day sections go on to that moment where people realised Trump was a genuine contender against Clinton. It was interesting to look back in retrospect to see how it all happened. It was also interesting from an Australian point of view for several reasons. One, Tur mentions that she doesn’t vote because she’s too close to the action. I found that a bit weird – wouldn’t reporters be more informed, both on and off the record? Two, rallies of thousands supporting Trump almost manically with MAGA hats and signs is quite foreign to us. We support our footy teams like that, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find many people supporting politics with the same fervour. Three – the electoral college thing. I think I finally understand how it works and why it came into existence, but…is it still relevant?
I thought I knew all the talking points of Trump’s 2016 campaign, but I’d clearly blanked some of this out. There were more than a few ‘what the’ moments as Katy recounted them. It’s still easy to read while your jaw is dropping and I zoomed through it. A great read about the peculiarities of politics.
Now we just need the 2020 campaign books!
http://samstillreading.wordpress.com show less
Katy Tur joined the Trump 2016 campaign from its earliest beginnings and followed it through to that election. Her story describes what it’s like to be on the road for a year and half show more (spoiler: you will get sick of takeaway, hotels and airports). It also describes how a small following became huge, with rallies on the tarmac at airports, fancy dinners for high spending donors and a lot of waiting, followed by a lot of rushing around. Trump called Katy out specifically a number of times during the campaign (at one point the Secret Service escorted her out at the end of an event), sometimes with a compliment but usually not. The book gets quite personal at times, as Katy finds it difficult in comparison with what she’s given up to follow Trump around the country. It also goes into her background, which was useful for me because this Aussie doesn’t have access to NBC.
The book is light hearted in tone generally and very easy to read. You don’t need to be an expert in U.S. politics or know every player (although some names I know from the four years that followed). The story starts on election night and then goes back to the initial campaign. As the campaign heats up, the election day sections go on to that moment where people realised Trump was a genuine contender against Clinton. It was interesting to look back in retrospect to see how it all happened. It was also interesting from an Australian point of view for several reasons. One, Tur mentions that she doesn’t vote because she’s too close to the action. I found that a bit weird – wouldn’t reporters be more informed, both on and off the record? Two, rallies of thousands supporting Trump almost manically with MAGA hats and signs is quite foreign to us. We support our footy teams like that, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find many people supporting politics with the same fervour. Three – the electoral college thing. I think I finally understand how it works and why it came into existence, but…is it still relevant?
I thought I knew all the talking points of Trump’s 2016 campaign, but I’d clearly blanked some of this out. There were more than a few ‘what the’ moments as Katy recounted them. It’s still easy to read while your jaw is dropping and I zoomed through it. A great read about the peculiarities of politics.
Now we just need the 2020 campaign books!
http://samstillreading.wordpress.com show less
The author, a journalist for NBC and MSNBC, details the year plus (more than 500 days) she spent on the campaign trail following Trump around. She details all the times someone (on his side or his opponent's) swore it was over, he was dead as a serious candidate, this just did it...whatever this was. It might be a revelation about his business or a tape about grabbing women by the pussy...none of it mattered. None of it hurt him. The author shows an enormous amount of insight, not going into show more the long detailed explanations that pundits prefer, trying to swerve down some rabbit hole of relative normality that allows them to analyze the campaign, the administration, and the aftermath. She sees bullshit for what it is, and calls it what it is. She talks with the voters, not the ones in coffee shops at a brief stopover in the heartland during a flyover, but ones attending the rallies, ones sending her death threats or (literally) spitting in her face. She does perhaps give a bit too much credit to them being 'frustrated' without explaining what they are 'frustrated' about, but other than that, an excellent recap. show less
Katy Tur is at heart a rough and tumble style journalist who has successfully adapted to a professional on-screen presence with grace and wit. There were laugh-out-loud anecdotes about the campaign trail and wise observations about the process and the candidate. There were astonishing reports of risk to the journalists from the rally crowds. Tur mixed a personal memoir with the unusual experience of following Trump on the campaign trail. At first I found the back and forth timeline a bit show more questionable, but one I adjusted, I realized the wisdom of formatting the story in this way. Her writing is clear, precise, inviting and funny as needed. I didn’t think I wanted to revisit 2016 because we watched it all so closely on TV, but this was a suitable epilogue to that experience. I will continue to follow her career and am grateful she took the time to record this portion of her reporting life. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 2
- Members
- 839
- Popularity
- #30,460
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 50
- ISBNs
- 19