For Immediate Release
Editor’s Note: Book publication date is December 2002. See attached Fact Sheet.

Charles Kuralt's People
Award-winning columns appear collectively in print for the first time.

Asheville, North Carolina (September 2, 2002) -- At the beginning of 1957, the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate awarded Charles Kuralt its Ernie Pyle Award. The award recognized writing and reporting "most nearly exemplifying the style and craftsmanship" of the great World War II reporter and human interest columnist Ernie Pyle. Kuralt scored for his Charlotte News' column "People."

Presented collectively for the first time ever, the 169 columns, written when Kuralt was only 22, represent some of Kuralt's best work and mark the beginning of a dialog that the journalist continued with Americans for more than four decades.

Resonating with themes of hope and goodness, "People" appears as fresh and relevant today as in 1956, a testament to the extraordinary talent of a reporter who found stories where no one else thought to look.

"Each day I would seek out some cop or kid or cab driver," Kuralt wrote of his experience at the Charlotte News, "and tell his story in a few hundred words . . . I used to walk bravely up to panhandlers and crapshooters -- the sort of people others avoided -- and strike up conversation."

Those conversations will ring familiar to those who watched Kuralt's Emmy-winning television shows "On the Road" and "Sunday Morning." Kuralt's style and substance were essentially unchanged over the years -- from his days as a rookie reporter to his final years as a veteran journalist.

"Kuralt's writing is sensitive, warm with affection for obscure people, and with excellent touches of humor where that is needed," commented a panel of judges who awarded young Kuralt the Pyle award.

Now, nearly five decades later, Charles Kuralt's sensitivity, warmth and humor continue to echo in these profiles of ordinary -- and often unnoticed -- people.

"People" will strike a chord with those who remember -- and perhaps long for -- a time when life was simpler -- and with those who did not get enough of the comforting voice and practical wisdom of the CBS newsman who died July 4, 1997.

"He had the ability to see small things and make them large."
Emery Wister, Charlotte News co-worker