I'm married to a scavenger of sorts and he often totes home rescued boxes of books that I paw through with shiny, hungry eyes. I pull out the odd and interesting and add them to my teetering stack.
Stanley Karnow is definitely a great writer, but I'm much more interested in the artists and revolutionary writers of 1950's Paris, not the cigar-smoking, gin-playing, "Mad Men" of the newspaper world. If that's your bag, pick this book up immediately, otherwise skip it.