“Getting the cold call email from him was crazy,” said author and journalist Brooke Kroeger, telling me about how her latest project, Undaunted – which recounts the two-century-long story of women in journalism – originated with a phone call from a male editor. “I had some idea of who he was, I was aware of him. I knew he was senior, and I looked him up pretty quick.”
The man in question was Jonathan Segal, a vice-president at Knopf who has published seven books that went on to receive Pulitzer prizes. He was offering Kroeger the assignment of a lifetime. Segal had determined that there was no good trade book available covering the history of women in journalism in the United States, and he was hoping Kroeger would be willing to write it.
