Reporter Beth (Jackendoff) Harpaz, a 1981 graduate of Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences and author of the new book, The Girls in the Van: Covering Hillary (St. Martin's Press), will visit the Cornell campus Feb. 4 to discuss her two years covering Hillary Clinton's senatorial campaign as well as careers in journalism with a liberal arts education. Harpaz has been an Associated Press reporter for more than a dozen years.

The talk, which is co-sponsored by the Cornell departments of English and American Studies and Arts and Sciences Career Services, is slated for 3:30 p.m. in 253 Mallott Hall.

Harpaz, who also has a master's degree from Columbia University School of Journalism, has won feature-writing awards from the Newswomen's Club of New York and the New York Press Club. She has covered everything from plane crashes to politics. Her coverage of Clinton's New York state campaign appeared in many newspapers, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Philadelphia Inquirer .

"Just like The Boys on the Bus [by Timothy Crouse on the 1972 Nixon-McGovern presidential race] did a generation ago, The Girls in the Va n gives us an intimate portrait, upfront and personal, of a major political campaign," said Gail Sheehy of Harpaz's book. Said a reviewer in the New York Times Book Review : "[The book] is an entertaining, bouncy romp through the usual fun and games of covering a campaign. But it offers more than a story of reporters sharing the perils and tedium of the road. It gives an illuminating glimpse at how the celebrity of Hillary Clinton kept the news media off base."

Harpaz also will do a book signing and reading from her book and 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 3, at the Tompkins County Public Library. The reading is sponsored by The Bookery.