The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour--and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News.

THE NEWS SORORITY: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour--and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News BY SHEILA WELLER PENGUIN PRESS, NEW YORK 2014, 436 PAGES, $29.95

Author of six other books and contributor to Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, Glamour, and various other publications, Sheila Weller has won numerous awards for her articles. Weller draws on exclusive interviews with colleagues and friends of Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, and Christiane Amanpour to document the lives of these women.

The trio has succeeded as TV news broadcasters "as no other women have." Each has added a "unique persona" to her individual broadcast: Sawyer, "circumspection, elegance, and personal restraint'; Couric, "an every-woman's touch," adroit wit, an ability for besting those who would dismiss her, and a willingness to experiment and scrap old models; and Amanpour, "an outsider's muckraking zeal, fearlessness, and a passionate commitment to help America understand international pain." The three vicariously have guided their audiences through most headline-generating events over the last three or more decades.

As a Wellesley College graduate, Sawyer began her career in 1969 as the first full-time female news reporter at WLKY Channel 32 in her hometown of Louisville, Ky. Later that year, she went to work for Pres. Richard Nixon for whom she worked "loyally" for eight years. In 1972, she accompanied Nixon on his historic trip to China. For four years, beginning in August 1974, Sawyer was in San Clemente, Calif., to help Nixon write his memoirs.

Late in 1978, Bill Small, CBS News vice-president, hired Sawyer: CBS needed a woman on its staff. At first just a "leg woman for her colleagues," by 1979 Sawyer advanced as on-air correspondent for "CBS Evening News." She "burnished her workhorse reputation" with her reports of Three Mile Island and the Iranian hostage crises in 1979. In just short of a year, she had so endeared herself to the studio and the public that "everyone forgot her Nixon connection." During the 1980 convention, she perfected the art of interviewing. Small considered her "exceptionally smart," not just "intellectually smart but smart about how to do a better job, what questions to ask, and how to maneuver." In 1981, Sawyer joined the "CBS Morning News" staff, and a delighted New York "loved Diane."

In October 1982, Sawyer began cohosting "CBS Morning News" with Bill Kurtis. She had a "rich...