The Boys on the Bus

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The Boys on the Bus (1973) is author Timothy Crouse's seminal non-fiction book detailing life on the road for reporters covering the 1972 United States presidential campaign.

The book was one of the first treatises on pack journalism ever to be published, following in the footsteps of Gay Talese's 1969 "fly on the wall" look into the New York Times called The Kingdom and the Power.

The Boys on the Bus evolved out of several articles Crouse had written for Rolling Stone. When released, the book became a best-seller and is still in print today, often being used as a standard text in many university journalism courses.

Several very recognizable reporters, whose bylines can still be seen today, are at turns critiqued, lampooned and glorified within the book, including R.W. "Johnny" Apple, Robert Novak, Haynes Johnson, David Broder, Hunter S. Thompson and Jules Witcover, not to mention the politicians they were covering: Richard M. Nixon and George McGovern. Later editions of the book contain a foreword by Thompson.

In 2000, Associated Press reporter Beth Harpaz wrote a book detailing her experiences covering Hillary Clinton's campaign for the U.S. Senate entitled Girls in the Van, a takeoff on Crouse's book title.