- Hardcover: 511 pages
- Publisher: Putnam Pub Group (T) (March 1993)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0399137327
- ISBN-13: 978-0399137327
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 4.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 839 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,136,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
According to Felsenthal ( Alice Roosevelt Longworth ), Katharine Graham, the imperious media mogul whose empire includes the Washington Post, Newsweek, TV stations and cable systems, was a fragile, withdrawn person, ill-prepared to run a troubled newspaper, when she became publisher of the Post after the suicide of her manic-depressive husband Phil. In this absorbing, gossipy biography, Felsenthal sympathetically portrays Graham (b. 1917) as a survivor of emotional abuse and as a brave fighter for a free press who took tremendous risks by printing the Pentagon Papers and by disregarding pressure from Nixon in covering the Watergate affair. As a girl, she had to prove her mettle constantly to her father, Eugene Meyer, a Jewish Wall Street millionaire, and to her bombastic Lutheran mother, Agnes Ernst Meyer, a "do-gooder liberal" who preached tolerance while harboring "an ugly streak of anti-Semitism" and belittling her children. Felsenthal presents Graham as an "emotionally battered" wife who endured her husband's anti-Semitic slurs and even laughed at the crude jokes he made at her expense. Photos. First serial to Vanity Fair; BOMC featured alternate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this new biography, Katharine Graham emerges as a woman of contradictions: a powerful publisher plagued by insecurity and self-doubt. Beginning with Graham's difficult relationship with her mother and moving through her marriage to the brilliant but manic-depressive Phil Graham, Felsenthal ( Alice Roosevelt Longworth , LJ 2/15/88, and The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority: The Biography of Phyllis Schafly , LJ 1/81) documents the emotional abuses that helped shape a vulnerable and tough Kay Graham. Ever contradictory, she supported Nixon for president yet made decisions that permitted Washington Post reporters to pursue a story that would result in his resignation. She believed women were inferior yet led a media empire to both financial and journalistic success. This is the second biography of Graham; the first, Deborah Davis's newly reissued Katharine the Great (Sheridan Pr., 1991), stirred controversy and was pulled soon after its publication in 1979. Felsenthal devotes a chapter to the fate of the first. She bases her biography on interviews and offers the reader a compelling portrait of a complex woman. It belongs in both public and academic libraries.
- Judy Solberg, Univ. of Maryland Libs., College Park
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Judy Solberg, Univ. of Maryland Libs., College Park
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
From family forsakeness to media maven,
By Chimaobi Amutah (Trenton, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Power, Privilege and the Post (Paperback)
This is an excellent book about Katherine Graham, former owner and publisher of The Washington Post. Katherine is initially, for all intents and purposes, ignored by her family throughout her youth. Little attention is bestowed upon her as her father, Eugene Meyer, runs The Washington Post and her mother, Agnes Meyer, socializes with every powerful individual she possibly can. Katherine perseveres through these harsh circumstances only to have her husband, Phil Graham, blow his brains out in the bathroom of one of their homes during a respite from an insane asylum. Katherine takes control of the newspaper (and company behind it), makes it the most influential paper in the nation, and becomes the most powerful woman in the world in the process. I recommend this book for any individual seeking a source of inspiration. This book should, and will hopefully, inspire many downtrodden people the world over for years to come.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The single most useful book about the Post.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Power, Privilege and the Post (Paperback)
I've read every book I could find about Katharine Graham and the Washington Post -- and if you're only going to read one, this is it. Complex business dealings are explained clearly, people are approached evenhandedly, and scandals (public and private) are discussed without either shirking or sensationalism (and with a lot of citations.) The book focuses on the personalities of these fascinating people, making for a riveting story.
5.0 out of 5 stars
How To Become a Successful Businesswoman,
This review is from: Power, Privilege and the Post (Paperback)
Biographer Carol Felsenthal turned her fine talents ro Katherine Graham and produced a top-notch bio, one which the reader can easily understand, and feel for, the housewife-turned-Fortune 500 businesswoman. What sticks in my mind is how Graham's distant mother finally decided to talk to her daughter about menstruation, to which Kay replied, "I started that last year."Rich detail such as this makes it easy to see why Readers Digest condensed the book, and opens up a controversy over just how much of Felsenthal's research was co-opted by Graham herself to write, or have ghostwritten, her "Personal History." Felsenthal's objectivity adds to Graham's life story in a way only a detached biographer can. If one wants a map of how a shy woman can succeede in the business world, one can do no better than to read Felsenthal's illuminating text.
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