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Personal History

by Katharine Graham

ISBN: 0375701044
ISBN-13: 9780375701047
Format: Paperback

Summary

The autobiography of the Washington socialite, power broker, and publisher of the Washington Post.

Customer Reviews

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Media Reviews

"...extraordinary!...[S]he manages to rewrite the story of her life in such way that no one will ever be able to boil it down to a sentence, but I'll give it a try: Katharine Graham turns out to have had not two lives but four, and the story of her journey from daughter to wife to widow to woman parallels to a surprising degree the history of women in this century. It's also a wonderful book."    -- Nora Ephron

   -- New York Times Book Review

"'Personal History' is a surprisingly personal and frank book, silver spoons, warts and all. One thing you can say for Katharine Graham-in order to survive and flourish, she may have ignored the fact that she is a woman, but no male publisher of 'The Washington Post' would have produced such a personally thorough and brave account of the life and times that made 'The Post' such a major public force."    -- Alex Kuczynski

   -- New York Observer

"That she failed and failed and admits it so openly is winning. That she sees so deeply into her faults and turns to others in desperation makes you cheer for her. That she expresses such love and gratitude for those who helped her is touching . That she grew and finally succeeded is inspiring."    -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

   -- New York Times

"A surprising piece of work on every level....Famous faces bob into sight as if in a capital version of 'Grand Hotel'-but more interesting is the degree to which this memoir is a description of the muggy intimacy of the world of Washington and the way one woman learned to live her life there."    -- David Remnick

   -- New Yorker

"She has recounted her life with style and rare courage..."    -- Roger Lowenstein

   -- Wall Street Journal

"Truly compelling....A deeply reflectrivwe and consistently interesting account of one of the most diverse (and sometimes tragic) lives of our time, and a history of the last half of the century as seen from Washington and its now dominant newspaper."    -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"...this serious effort to make some reckoning of a long and varied life throws more light on the psychology of women, and the profound changes brought about by the women's movement, than a dozen tomes filled with psychological jargon."    -- Jill Ker Conway

   -- Washington Post Book World

"Graham's aptly named book crosscuts between the engrossing social history of her life and times...and her agonizing personal history."    -- Jack Shafer

   -- Slate

"America's most influential, best-known publisher has written memoirs that are a match for those of Ulysses S. Grant more than 100 years ago....Long after Kay Graham's journalistic and corporate achievements fade in memory, this memoir will live on."

   -- Forbes

"An autobiographical masterpiece."

   -- Economist

"Disarmingly candid and immensely readable."    -- Richard Zoglin

   -- Time

"A captivating memoir."    -- Susan Jacoby

   -- Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.)

"Unflinchingly candid."    -- Sally Quinn

   -- Vanity Fair

"Poignant, sober, funny, at times brutally honest."    -- Joseph Kahn

   -- Boston Globe

"An amazing ride."

   -- Publishers Weekly

"...When all is said and done-after the talks with Adlai and the walks with McNamara and the dances at Truman Capote's grand masked ball; after the tragedy and comedy, the gossip and glamour, the humiliations and heroics-what lingers longest is the echo of that straight appraisal of herself half a century ago: 'I wanted to be a journalist and my father had a newspaper.' One closes the book marveling anew at the forces that shape our history, and that made this woman one of them.    -- Gloria Cooper

   -- Columbia Journalism Review

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Vintage Books
Published date: 1998
Size: 5.5 x 8.25 inches
Weight: 1.4 pounds

Publisher's Notes

Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for BiographyAn extraordinarily frank, honest, and generous book by one of Americas most famous and admired women, Personal History is, as its title suggests, a book composed of both personal memoir and history.It is the story of Grahams parents: the multimillionaire father who left private business and government service to buy and restore the down-and-out Washington Post, and the formidable, self-absorbed mother who was more interested in her political and charity work, and her passionate friendships with men like Thomas Mann and Adlai Stevenson, than in her children.It is the story of how The Washington Post struggled to succeed -- a fascinating and instructive business history as told from the inside (the paper has been run by Graham herself, her father, her husband, and now her son).It is the story of Phil Graham -- Kays brilliant, charismatic husband (he clerked for two Supreme Court justices) -- whose plunge into manic-depression, betrayal, and eventual suicide is movingly and charitably recounted. Best of all, it is the story of Kay Graham herself. She was brought up in a family of great wealth, yet she learned and understood nothing about money. She is half-Jewish, yet -- incredibly -- remained unaware of it for many years.She describes herself as having been naive and awkward, yet intelligent and energetic. She married a man she worshipped, and he fascinated and educated her, and then, in his illness, turned from her and abused her. This destruction of her confidence and happiness is a drama in itself, followed by the even more intense drama of her new life as the head of a great newspaper and a great company, a famous (and even feared) woman in her own right. Hers is a life that came into its own with a vengeance -- a success story on every level.Grahams book is populated with a cast of fascinating characters, from fifty years of presidents (and their wives), to Steichen, Brancusi, Felix Frankfurter, Warren Buffett (her great advisor and protector), Robert McNamara, George Schultz (her regular tennis partner), and, of course, the great names from the Post: Woodward, Bernstein, and Grahams editor/partner, Ben Bradlee. She writes of them, and of the most dramatic moments of her stewardship of the Post (including the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the pressmen's strike), with acuity, humor, and good judgment. Her book is about learning by doing, about growing and growing up, about Washington, and about a woman liberated by both circumstance and her own great strengths.

Other Editions

Hardcover Illustrated - Random House Inc (1997) - from $1.00
Paperback Reprint - Random House Inc (1998) - from $1.00

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Personal History

by Katharine Graham

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