Don't Bury the Lede

This memoir is by an unconventional journalist who became a reporter for newspapers including the Des Moines Register and the Chicago Tribune, was the editor of the esteemed Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazine, and then was a University of Colorado journalism professor.

Len Ackland's story focuses on two extraordinarily intense experiences, which jolted him and shaped his lifelong quest for answers. First came the horrific suicide of his father, Jack-a World War II veteran-in 1961. Len was seventeen and dealt with trauma and a sense of guilt. Years later, shocking information from his mother made him determined to eventually discover who and what was responsible for putting his father in such a dark place.

When, decades later, Len could investigate the awful puzzle of his father's death, he possessed the emotional distance and the journalistic tools to do so. He began assembling those skills during his second pivotal life experience-the American War in Vietnam, during 1967-68. He first worked with a humanitarian organization in Huế, then worked out of Saigon on a RAND Corp. study of Viet Cong motivation and morale before becoming a freelance journalist to write the brutal truth about the war.

Having never taken a journalism class, Len describes some zany experiences on his road to professional journalism and university teaching.

A return visit to Vietnam after the war shocked and disappointed him.