Barbara Walters blazed a trail for women in news and in television, but it is her voice that is her signature. So it makes sense that she would be the reader on the audio version of her new book, Audition.
    Maybe she didn't have time to read the whole thing -- it is almost 600 pages -- but the audio version is abridged, and that's a shame. Not only is it missing some key elements of her life story, but it would have been a pleasure to spend more time with her than the six hours on these five CDs.
    Among the missing pieces are details of her miserable treatment by Frank McGee on the Today Show and his edict that she could not join in an interview until after he had asked four questions; details of her equally miserable treatment by Harry Reasoner when she shared the desk with him on the Evening News and how his friends kept a stopwatch on her to make sure she was not getting more air time; and the item that created the most buzz when the book was published, her description of her inter-racial affair with then-Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, a married man at the time.
    And, perhaps the best anecdote of all is missing -- the story of a gift she received from opera singer Beverly Sills: a ring with the inscription "I did that already."
   For these reasons, and because the photos in the book are wonderful, I make the rare suggestion that you buy the book because the audio version isn't as good. And they cost the same!

Photo by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)