Power, Privilege and the Post: The Katharine Graham Story - Softcover

Felsenthal, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 188836386X ISBN 13: 9781888363869

Publisher: Seven Stories Press, 1999

Synopsis

Katherine Graham's story has all the elements of the phoenix rising from the ashes, and in Carol Felsenthal's unauthorized biography, Power, Privilege, and the Post, Graham's personal tragedies and triumphs are revealed. The homely and insecure daughter of the Jewish millionaire and owner of The Washington Post, Eugene Myer, Kay married the handsome, brilliant and power hungry Phillip Graham in 1940. By 1948 Kay's father had turned control of The Washington Post over to Phil, who spent the next decade amassing a media empire that included radio and TV stations. But, as Felsenthal shows, he mostly focused on building the reputation of the Post and positioning himself as a Washington power-player. Plagued by manic depression, Phil's behavior became more erratic and outlandish, and his downward spiral ended in 1963 when he took his own life. Surprising the newspaper industry, Kay Graham took control of the paper, beginning one of the most unprecedented careers in media history.
Felsenthal weaves her exhaustive research into a perceptive portrayal of the Graham family and an expert dissection of the internal politics at the Post, and a portrait of one of a unique, tragic, and ultimately triumphant figure of twentieth-century America.

About this title

About the Author:

CAROL FELSENTHAL is the author of several acclaimed biographies, including the best-selling Power, Privilege, and the Post: The Katharine Graham Story; Princess Alice: The Life and Times of Alice Roosevelt Longworth; and The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority: The Biography of Phyllis Schlafly.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 188836386X
• ISBN 13: 9781888363869
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 520