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Personal History (平装)
by Katharine Graham
| Category:
Memoir, Woman in business, Washington Post, Family business |
| Market price: ¥ 198.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Well worthy of the Pulitzer Prize, Personal History is a great memoir of a woman of amazing determination and moral courage. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 12 items |
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The New York Times (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-21 00:00>
An extraordinary autobiography... touching... winning... inspiring. |
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Time (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-21 00:00>
Disarmingly candid and immensely readable... an invaluable inside glimpse of the most critical turning points in American journalism.
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Bonnie Smothers (Booklist) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-21 00:00>
Katharine (with an a) Graham has led a very full life, and her personal history will be, most likely, very well received by the public, for through it, she manages to answer questions of enduring interest: How do the excessively rich live? How do the rich get rich? How do they stay that way? How does a young, rich woman become more than a woman with lots of time on her hands? She indirectly answers those questions by shaping her family's history with a view toward its stewardship of the Washington Post. Graham, born to multimillionaire Eugene Meyer, a Jew, and Agnes Ernst, an arrogant German, lived such a sheltered life that in college she had to be told how to wash a sweater. Like most men of her time, she did not know how to maintain her material possessions but was well schooled in mind and body (a professional tennis player lived with the family for a while). Beyond her upbringing, Graham manages a controlled but seemingly full discussion of the many sensational aspects of her life: the suicide of her husband, Phil Graham; her rise to publisher of The Post; the Pentagon Papers; Watergate; and the dreadful pressmen's strike, a dispute in which Graham prevailed. In this well-researched memoir, with a cast of fascinating people doing their cameo turns, including several presidents, the photographer Edward Steichen, Thomas Mann, Felix Frankfurter, Warren Buffet, and Ben Bradlee, Graham keeps the sets moving and makes everyone work for her. It is a well-examined life. |
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Nora Ephron (The New York Times Book Review) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-21 00:00>
Nothing that has been printed about Mrs. Graham is as compelling as the story she tells herself in Personal History, her riveting, moving autobiography... 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. |
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Erica Mitchell (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-21 00:00>
This is a very personal autobiography of Katharine Graham, one of the most influential women of the Twentieth Century. Graham begins her story with the tale of how her parents met at an art exhibition, and relates the events of her early childhood. She explains how her father came to purchase the Washington Post, and how she alone amongst her siblings was truly drawn to the paper from her teenage years. She goes on to describe dating and eventually marrying Phil Graham, and how her father came to pass the management of the newspaper on to him. Later, she details Graham's descent into mental illness leading to his suicide, and how it finally fell onto her shoulders to lead the paper. Her most fascinating stories, however, come from her tenure as publisher of the Post, covering the turbulent period from the release of the Pentagon Papers, to the uncovering of the Watergate scandal and to the lengthy pressmen's strike against the Post in the 1970s.
The story is indeed a personal one, in which Graham documents events from her own point of view. As I read this book, I was constantly aware that Graham may have chosen to leave out some details and emphasize others in order to show herself in the best light. But since this is an autobiography, such a subjective account is perfectly reasonable. This is history as Graham would have it told.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-21 00:00>
Katharine Graham is widely recognized for her association with Watergate, but this book goes oh so much further in truly revealing what an incredible woman she truly was. In truth, it reveals a person of such incredible humility and impeccable character.
Perhaps what amazed me the most about the book (I, like most, expected the frequent references to "who's who" in American history - she just happenned to rub shoulders with all of them) was her glaring honesty in talking about herself in retrospect - her self esteem, her marriage, her abilities as a manger, and her track record as a mother.
Katharine Graham was courageous enough, and indeed showed her brilliance, in truly opening up about what she faced growing up in a sheltered, priveleged upbringing. She was honest about her mother, her relationship with her father, and her insecurity in dealing with men in her early years.
The Watergate sequence of the book can't be glossed over - she saved American journalism - but the reader is so drawn into the development of her as a confident, commanding individual and her growth as a manager, that Watergate does not consume the book. In fact, she devotes perhaps equal time to the labor issues that bogged the business down in the 1970's.
Her humility is evident throughout the book. The references to power and greatness are inevitable; after all, how many Americans can have claimed to have lunched at Albert Einstein's house, been close friends with Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, and have summered with Nancy Reagan? Despite the references, she is impeccably honest in her assesment of people - a refreshing trait.
This is truly a remarkable read for anyone who truly wants to discover what makes a true leader.
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Toshio Fukuhara (MSL quote), Japan
<2007-01-21 00:00>
This is a story about a life of a rich and privileged lady. It's a kind of life that few can relate to. Not only Ms. Graham routinely got invited to the White House functions but also the incumbent presidents of not your company but the United States of America dropped by every now and then for dinner at her mansion. Can you imagine JFK and Jacquie sitting at your dining table at home?
The memoir takes readers through how she endured and fought against life threatening pressure from the Nixon administration to sustain her media's freedom to report during the days of Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Without her "state of the art" support as publisher, as The Washington Post's former executive editor Ben Bradlee put it, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward would not have been able to continue their state of the art investigative reporting. She sure surrounded herself with a lot of powerful and experienced friends whom she constantly sought advice to get over all those challenges she faced. Nontheless, considering her upbringing, I still don't understand exactly what made her so strong as a person.
To me, the book started out boring with her rich and privileged childhood, followed by her harsh and broken marriage, then the real reading pleasure and excitement started when and after she took over The Washington Post. I found her description on some of the heavy weights, such as Peter G. Peterson, Commerce Secretary under Nixon Administration, and Henry Kissinger, unique and interesting. But what surprised me most was how much (a lot) she set aside to describe her relationship, though nothing romantic, with a billionaire investor Warren Buffet. I learned so much about the second richest man in America as a person in her memoir.
In many ways, this memoir is complete with Ben Bradlee's A Good Life which is more concise and better edited.
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C. Gilbert (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
A treasure for people who make a hobby out of media stories, as I do, Personal History is as much about the Post as it is about Graham herself. But as I think Graham is saying in the book, everything personal in her life was somehow linked to the paper - either through her own efforts at its helm or as the wife and daughter of the men who were leading it.
I've read a lot of the criticism of this book - and I know enough about media history to know that at least some of it is fair. At least in the sense that it's accurate. Graham doesn't come out wearing a hair shirt about the real media relationship to people in power. She also has a slightly nervous tone - the sound of someone who isn't very sure her accomplishments are going to be achieved. But in the end I found that even valid criticisms didn't really interfere with my reading of the book. In the end I was moved by it, and felt honored that Graham was so willing to put herself out there to be observed and judged.
In some respects it's difficult to argue that Graham had a difficult life - she was born to such enormous privilege that she had resources to deal with tragedy that most people can never command. (You hear her refer to her family's 'summer home', but what the means remains opaque until you see the picture!). Even still, Graham is human. To be constantly in the shadow of the people in your life, to see yourself as helpmeet and not a full person, to emerge from that shadow and assert that you have a place in your own right - that's certainly something that speaks to everyone, regardless of who they are.
What I find extraordinary is how revealing the book is about her insecurities. This is a very personal autobiography, and Graham lets you see her weaknesses in a way that I think most public figures would not allow. I don't agree with many of the positions Graham takes, and certainly she and I are light years apart in almost every aspect of background and experience, but I felt lucky that I was able to read this book. And I was also glad that she wrote it.
A book to read, and to give away as a gift. |
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Brooke Dolara (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
Katharine Graham is an exemplary women who led an extraordinary life. Surrounded by equally talented and ambitious men, she successfully took the helm of the Washington Post and served as a symbol of strength for women in business, not simply in the arena of journalism. In her autobiography, Personal History, Katharine Graham reveals a detailed account of her privileged childhood, her troubled marriage to Phil Graham, and her struggles and groundbreaking victories at the Post. Along with great candor, she also writes with tact and grace. She presents her story simply with facts, and doesn't waste time with melodrama and exaggerated self-importance. While history buffs will love the recollections of the battle over the Pentagon papers, other readers will surely be engorssed just by Katharine Graham's ability to get the facts across.
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Donald Mitchell (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
Ms. Katharine Graham's autobiography explores many dimensions of life that will appeal to readers: lifestyles of the rich and famous with her celebrity and society friends; an inside look at one of America's most powerful and famous families in the 20th century; overcoming the personal tragedy of being married to a brilliant, manic-depressive cheater who was nasty to her; a history of the rise of the Washington Post from a minor D. C. paper to the top ranks of international journalism; becoming the head of a family that had been dominated by strong personalities who had put her in a supporting role; seeing the interactions of the press with presidents up close; and learning to be a female publisher and CEO on the job with almost no prior experience.
If you are like me, you will find the sections of the book about her growing up as Andre Meyer's daughter, Watergate, the strike with the pressman's union at the Post, and her relationship with Warren Buffett to be the most interesting parts of the book.
If, like me, you decide that you find Ms. Graham appealing, it will probably be because of her willingness to do the right thing, even when very painful and dangerous to her, and her loyalty to others... even when that loyalty may not have been earned. Even to her enemies, she held out olive branches to keep lines of communication open... which were often rejected.
Although the book is candid about her own failings (having been too sheltered as a child and wife, making lots of mistakes in picking and working with people at the Washington Post Company, and being too accepting of male chauvinism) and family members who are deceased (especially her father, mother, and husband), she pulls back from any significant observations about many of her friends and acquaintances who are still living. You will see these people primarily from the perspective of having been lunch and dinner companions and guests. A curtain of privacy is also pulled over long sections of her life. For example, you will find out the names of the people and the yacht that she disappeared on for several weeks, but nothing about what occurred.
On the other hand, CEO autobiographies usually toot the horn of the CEO. The closest this one comes to tooting is quoting Warren Buffett in pointing out that Washington Post Company stock grew more than double the rate of any other similar company during the time when she was CEO. Actually, even that observation is modest. As measured by stock-price performance, Ms. Graham is one of the great CEOs of the 20th century.
She has also left behind a legacy of commitment to a free press from the Pentagon Papers publication and the Watergate exposures that will stand as a beacon for future publishers. In either case, she could have lost the bulk of her wealth and influence had things turned out differently. Most CEOs would be reluctant to take those kinds of risks in the public interest. Certainly, there was no financial windfall to taking these courses. It was simply the right thing to do. Thank you, Ms. Graham!
Have you ever been in a situation where you were supposed to know how to do something, but had no clue? Throughout her business career, Ms. Graham was placed in that awkward situation. Towards the end of the book, she reveals that she wished that she had attended Harvard Business School. Throughout her business career, Ms. Graham reveals here feeling like a fraud and not knowing what questions to ask. But in business, it's usually more important what you do than what you know. And she kept moving forward until she found a method that worked. That kind of perseverance takes great moral courage, and I was impressed to realize just how much more difficult her accomplishments were to achieve than they seemed to outsiders.
Where should you be taking a more active role in choosing your life's direction? Where should you be more understanding of friends and family members? Where should you keep the lines of communications open? Where should you draw the line at accommodation?
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1 2 | Total 2 pages 12 items |
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