As Managing Editor of United Press International and Executive Editor of Gannett News Service during a 40-year-journalism career, Ron Cohen has been directly responsible for instantly bringing the top headlines every day to hundreds of millions of readers, viewers and listeners in every corner of the globe.
Assassinations, impeachments, terrorist attacks, elections, wars, disasters both natural and man-made -- these constitute the 24-hour-a-day breaking news cycle that helped make Cohen one of the world's most influential journalists.
In these days of political turmoil and allegations of "fake news," this highly personal book offers a chance to see and feel how it's been to work in a changing media universe -- with constant challenges, excitement and pressure to perform, plus the thrills, satisfaction and frustration that make the news business at once rewarding and exhausting.
Now, shifting gears a bit, Cohen has written "Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast! A Journalist's Uncommon Memoir." It is sweet, humorous, quirky, serious -- a sort of written/oral history of his 80 years on Planet Earth.
With this collection of stories, Ron tells you about the fascinating characters he has encountered along his journey, as well about a rich North Jersey Italian-Jewish heritage dating back to the early 20th Century when mixed marriages were rare -- and often frowned upon.
The stories aim at his four young grandkids -- whom he cannot and simply will not deny "Ice Cream for Breakfast" -- in hopes they will get to better know (and remember) a grandfather who is geographically distant if emotionally close.
But it also is for the 70 million grandparents in America and for "kids of all ages" looking for a grin, a sigh, a belly-laugh -- even an occasional throat lump.
Cohen's previous book, "Down to the Wire: UPI's Fight for Survival" (McGraw-Hill, 1989) was named Best Business Book of the Year by Business Week magazine, and won, among other awards, the coveted Gold Medal for Journalism History from the Society of Professional Journalists.
