"Burning Down My Masters' House is the memoir that captures the pain, anger and fierce determination of Jayson Blair. A young black journalist who descended from slaves, he rose to become a national correspondent at The New York Times before igniting the largest journalism scandal in decades." "Blair accepts all the words that have been used to describe him: liar, thief, fabricator and plagiarist. He does not push responsibility for his actions onto anyone else, but seeks to explain how someone with talent and opportunity could fall from such great heights, primarily by his own hand. For the first time, in his own words, Blair seeks to answer the question that consumed media watchers, writers and readers everywhere: How could such a thing have happened at The New York Times?" "Blair lays out his acts of deception and examines the reasons behind them. He openly and honestly describes the anger that developed inside him while growing up black in the white South. He tells how his drug and alcohol addiction fanned the sparks of this anger into an all-consuming rage." "Burning Down My Masters' House take the reader to the inner-city streets of New York during the World Trade Center attacks and to the Washington D.C. area during the sniper shootings. Against the backdrop of some of the biggest stories of the new millenium is the story of one man's personal struggles with the trauma of covering, and becoming a part of, emotionally-loaded news events. Blair also provides his own critical analysis of how the news media covers topics, and where it often falls short of its goals to be fair, balanced and objective." "Blair recounts the battle with mental illness that sent him spinning recklessly out-of-control and eventually ended his career as a journalist. In candid detail, he reveals his struggle to recover from a disease - a form of manic-depression with psychotic symptoms - that caused him to succumb to exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions. Blair tells of deep psychosis, a suicide attempt, hospitalization in a mental institution and his struggle with powerful drugs that eventually allowed him to function again and begin the search for answers."--BOOK JACKET.