The Place to Be

[question everything]

is a book by former CBS reporter Roger Mudd.

It was recently reviewed by the WSJ

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120614050142156027.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal (subscription, maybe?)

and I found these anecdotes interesting:

Before interviewing Robert Kennedy for a TV special, Mr. Mudd asks him whether he would prefer to be addressed as "Mr. Attorney General" or "Attorney General Kennedy." "How about Bobbsie?" replies RFK.

Sharing a dais with Richard Nixon at a TV correspondents' banquet, Mr. Mudd and the president watch Diana Ross perform. "They really do have a sense of rhythm, don't they!" marvels Nixon. On the night Nixon resigned, Lillian Brown, a CBS makeup artist, was summoned to the White House and had to comfort the sobbing president so that his makeup would stop running. Later, when she worked on Ronald Reagan, she found each time that he was already wearing makeup.

Mr. Mudd's signature moment, of course, was his 1979 interview with Sen. Edward Kennedy, who was poised to challenge President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. A simple question from Mr. Mudd -- "Why do you want to be president?" -- prompted a nearly incoherent 334-word monologue from Sen. Kennedy that showed plainly that he didn't know why he wanted to be president, dooming his White House hopes forever.