WOMEN ON THE MOVE SUSAN PAGE

Half a century later, it’s hard to recall the shock waves that Barbara Walters set off when she was named cohost of the Today show and then, two years later, the first female coanchor of a network evening news program when she took her seat next to Harry Reasoner on ABC Evening News. Or that she became the highest-paid news anchor of any gender, pioneered the BIG TV interview and, in her late 60s, created a new form of talk TV with The View.

Bestselling author Susan Page reminds us how Walters thwarted the rules of misogynistic culture in her riveting new biography of the most successful female broadcaster of all time, The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters. Based on 150 interviews, Page traces the personal demons that fueled Walters’ rule-breaking ambitions, how she defied the belief that women couldn’t report “serious” news, outcompeted her most ferocious competitors and still guarded her complicated personal life from scrutiny.

Journalist, political commentator and biographer, Susan Page is the Washington bureau chief USA Today and author of biographies on Barbara Bush and Nancy Pelosi.