Morley Safer

Morley Safer, co-editor of and correspondent for the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes since 1970, lists six books that have affected “my life, my work, and, indeed, my reading habits.”

The Trial by Franz Kafka (Schocken Books, $13.50). Written in the early 1920s, this is the most chillingly accurate description of the modern age—“the age of anxiety” as Auden called it. Everything—all the darknesses and brutalities, the small daily bureaucratic atrocities that continue to mark our times—is laid down in simple, haunting language.

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (Bantam Books, $7). This novel takes place in the nightmare of Soviet Russia. It is a stunning interrogation of idealism by corruption. Corruption triumphs.

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Kim by Rudyard Kipling (Viking Press, $7). This is a book that I have returned to probably half a dozen times since I first read it almost 60 years ago. Kipling’s evocations of the subcontinent, the intrigues of Central Asia, tribalism, and the ways of the raj can truly be appreciated after you’ve spent some time in those parts. The book, published 100 years ago, never grows stale.

Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall (Stackpole Books, $25). This was required reading for American staff officers assigned to Vietnam. Unfortunately, they paid no heed to what is a beautifully written cautionary tale.

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer (Simon & Schuster, $25). This is history-as-journalism at its very best, and this book is probably the best of breed of the thousands written on the subject by assorted soldiers and scholars.

Other People’s Trades by Primo Levi (out of print). In this collection of his newspaper columns published in La Stampa of Turin, Levi observes, with the keenness of a man who’s seen everything, the joyous eccentricities of his neighbors. It is a book to carry with you. A book to open at any page for a small dose of quiet amusement.