Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Today on the pod, we are talking about

journalists, you know, the real old-fashioned gumshoe types with a pat in their hand and a chip on

their shoulder. In a bit, we'll hear from New Yorker writer Calvin Trillen talking about his book

chronicling the lives of some more, you know, offbeat reporters, which is saying a lot,

considering who we're talking about here.

But first, journalists aren't in the business of mythmaking, quite the opposite, really,

and Jeanette Conan's book, Fierce Ambition, resists waxing nostalgic on some good old days of journalism.

It's a biography of Maggie Higgins,

an important barrier-breaking war reporter who was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for

foreign correspondence. And yet, she helped pave the way for a lot of women afterwards. But Conan

tells MPR's Mary Louise Kelly that that was just a byproduct of her

looking out for herself. That's ahead. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away

from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show

Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you

stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

We are going to spend these next several minutes on the remarkable life of Maggie Higgins. Higgins was the first

woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondents. She helped to change war reporting,

both what kind of stories journalists were filing and by helping kick open the door for other women.

And she is the subject of the new biography, Fierce Ambition, the Life and Legend of

War Correspondent Maggie Higgins. The author is Jeanette Conant, and she's with me now. Welcome.

Thanks for having me. So you open this book with one of her hardest assignments, I suppose

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