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Personal History (Paperback)
by Katharine Graham
| Category:
Memoir, Woman in business, Washington Post, Family business |
| Market price: ¥ 198.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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 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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Author: Katharine Graham
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition
Pub. in: February, 1998
ISBN: 0375701044
Pages: 688
Measurements: 8 x 5.2 x 1.4 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00648
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0375701047
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- Awards & Credential -
Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the #1 National Bestseller in North America. |
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- MSL Picks -
Katherine Graham's Personal History combines all of the necessary elements of biography to create an immensely entertaining and sometimes touching portrait of a fascinating woman. Her life was interesting enough that it would make a good story for even a mediocre author; but clearly Graham did not become the head of the Washington Post without learning the essence of a well turned phrase. Her witty and intelligent prose complements her captivating story and creates an autobiography worthy of its Pulitzer Prize.
I found Graham's story intriguing on three levels, the first of which is (as the title states) personal. Much of the first half of the book focuses on her family life, growing up in the extremely wealthy Meyer household, her relations with her parents, and eventually her meeting and marrying Phil Graham. All of the central characters are interesting, but I was personally struck by her discussion of her mother, Agnes Meyer, a woman both brilliant and driven, yet emotionally aloof from her family. Graham's candor respecting her mother is impressive. She admits at one point: "I can't say I think Mother genuinely loved us" (p. 51) and remembers that in turn her younger sister loved their governess more than Mrs. Meyer (p. 34). But Graham does not unfairly oversimplify her mother; she faithfully describes the true complexity of their relationship, admitting that resentment and love co-existed (p. 439). Graham does justice to everyone in her narrative and there simply isn't space enough here to describe fully all of the crucial characters.
The second level of interest (which dominates the latter half of the book) is the story of the Washington Post and the newspaper industry in general. Graham covers the major milestones of Post from her father's acquisition in 1933 to its current management by her son, Don. Graham herself was publisher during the most important years for the Post and describes three main events: the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the Pressmen's Strike in 1975. All three episodes are of interest, but I actually was most absorbed by the last. Graham clearly evokes the tension felt on all sides, and the great efforts made by those dedicated to continued publication who practically lived in the Post building. I was amazed to read that before they had repaired their own presses (smashed by the striking workers) they hired helicoptors to fly pages of type out to other publishers (p. 544). Watergate was also interesting.
The third captivating aspect of this book is its ability to connect the reader to the great figures of the 20th century through its empathetic protagonist. Katherine Graham knew seemingly every prominent individual and makes them seem more human than do textbooks or newsreel footage. When she was 11, she travelled to Europe where she met Albert Einstein: "He was simply grand! His hair is positively a nest..." (p. 41). She had dinners with John and Bobby Kennedy and her husband was partially responsible for LBJ's vice-presidency. In 1966 Truman Capote held a lavish and exclusive party at which Graham was the guest of honor. She clearly has respect for these celebrities and political leaders, but she also portrays them as what they were: human and fallible. I find this insider's perspective adds a great deal of flavor to history.
Do note that this is a sizable read, weighing in slightly over 600 pages. But as I hope this review conveyed, I found nearly all of those pages quite enjoyable. Personal History combines a fascinating life, excellent writing, and (most importantly) Graham's unflinching self-scrutiny. Sure to keep you reading!
(From quoting Graham Phillips, USA)
Target readers:
All the readers who admire such a great woman as the author and the former publisher of The Washington Post.
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Katharine Graham is fondly remembered as the powerful, longtime publisher of the Washington Post. She died in 2001.
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From Publisher
Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
An extraordinarily frank, honest, and generous book by one of America's 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 Graham's 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 - Kay's 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.
Graham's 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 Graham's editorpartner, 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.
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From Chapter One
My parents' paths first crossed in a museum on 23rd Street in New York. It was Lincoln's Birthday, 1908. Eugene Meyer, who was thirty-two years old, had been in business for himself for only a few years, but had already made several million dollars. Agnes Ernst, just twenty-one and a recent graduate of Barnard, was strikingly beautiful. She was earning her own living and helping to support her family as well by her free-lance work for a newspaper, the old New York Sun. She was also interested in the art world, which was what brought her to the exhibit of Japanese prints. Both her interests and her work were unusual for a woman in those days.
On his way down to Wall Street, my father, who was driving a Stanley Steamer, one of the earliest automobiles, noticed an acquaintance whom he didn't especially like. But Edgar Kohler looked frail and dejected and my father felt sorry for him, so he offered him a ride, mentioning that he was going to stop off at a Japanese-print exhibit. Kohler decided to accompany him.
Going into the gallery, they met two friends coming out, who assessed the exhibition this way: "There's a girl walking around who's better-looking than anything on the walls." Once inside, Kohler and my father immediately spotted her - a tall young woman with fair hair and blue eyes, clearly strong, dynamic, and self-assured. My mother always remembered what she was wearing that day, because she felt that her "costume," as she called it, had played a part in her destiny. She must have been quite a sight m her gray tweed suit and small squirrel cap adorned with an eagle feather. My father, on seeing her, said to Kohler, "That's the girl I'm going to marry."
Are you serious?" Kohler asked, to which my father responded, "I was never more serious in my whole life." Kohler, supposing that they'd never run into her :again, suggested that my father speak to her. "No. That would offend her and spoil everything," my father replied. The two men then agreed that whoever subsequently might meet her first would introduce her to the other.
Just a week later, Kohler called my father and said, "Guess what appened?" "You met the girl," was the ready answer. "Damn you, I did," Kohler responded. He had been to a party at the home of one of Agnes's Barnard classmates, where they were giving an amateur performance of The Merry Widow in which my mother was playing Count Danilo. When she appeared after the performance out of costume, Kohler realized that she was the girl from the art show. He introduced himself, told her about the pact with my father, and arranged a lunch for the three of them.
My father's friend had fulfilled his pledge by introducing Eugene and Agnes to each other. On Lincoln's Birthday in 1910, two years to the day after Eugene had first seen Agnes in the gallery, they were married. When I look back over my long life, if there is one thing that leaps out at me it is the role of luck and chance in our lives. From this particular string of accidental happenings all the rest followed.
My father came from a distinguished Jewish family with roots going back many generations in Alsace-Lorraine, France. It was a family that numbered many rabbis and civic leaders. Jacob Meyer, my great-greatgrandfather, who was awarded the Legion of Honor, had actually been a member of the Sanhedrin, the college of Jewish notables called by Napoleon I in connection with recognizing the rights of Jews as citizens.
My paternal grandfather, named Marc Eugene Meyer, but always called Eugene, was born in 1842 in Strasbourg, the youngest of four children by his father's second wife. When his father died, his mother was left penniless, and Eugene could stay in school only until the age of fourteen; then, as his siblings had already done, he went to work to help support the family. He first worked for two Blum brothers who owned one store in Alsace and another - improbably - in Donaldsonville, Mississippi, and when one of young Eugene's bosses said he was going to America, my grandfather decided to go with him. In Paris, on the way, he was introduced by Blum to Alexandre Lazard of the firm of Lazard Freres, who gave him an introduction to their San Francisco partner. Eugene traveled to New York on the fastest boat going, a side-wheeler, for a third-class fare of $110, leaving Europe in September 1859. From New York he took a steamship to Panama, crossed the Isthmus by rail, and then caught another steamer to San Francisco, at that time a city of fifty thousand or so people. He spent two years there, learning English and saving a little money from his job at an auction house, until in 1861 he moved to Los Angeles, where a cousin of the Lazards' was said to need a clerk for his store. As described by Eugene himself, the town was made up of only three or four thousand inhabitants, mostly foreigners. There were four brick houses - the rest were adobe with roofs that cracked. There were no paved streets or sewers. The water for both drinking and irrigation came from ditches. My grandfather stayed in Los Angeles for the next twenty-two years.
He started as clerk and bookkeeper, living in the general store's back room. Sometimes he slept on the counter with his gun, to protect the merchandise. As his reputation for reliability and sobriety spread, some of his new friends began leaving money with him, for there were no banks. Within three years, he became a general partner in the store, which came to be known as "The City of Paris." Within ten years, he and his brother Constant had taken it over. He also started lending money, became director of a bank and organizer of the Los Angeles Social Club, and helped maintain law and order as a member of the Vigilance Committee. He was an incorporator of the city water system, involved in real estate and mining investments, and doubled as the French consular agent. In 1867, he married the sixteen-year-old Harriet Newmark, whose father, a rabbi, performed the ceremony, following which a sumptuous dinner was served at the couple's new home - complete with ice cream, something new to Los Angeles.
My father, named Eugene Isaac Meyer after his father and grandfather, was born in 1875, the first boy in the family after three girls, Rosalie, Elise, and Florence. Four more children followed: two daughters, Ruth and Aline; and two sons, Walter and the youngest child, Edgar. Harriet, not as strong as her husband, became a more or less permanent invalid - whether from having eight children by the age of thirty-two under pioneering medical conditions or because there was some depression involved, or both. As a result, my father's mother-figure in his youth was his sister Rosalie, six years older than he, who left school to help raise her siblings.
These early circumstances help me understand my father's personality. His father was very strict and not particularly loving, as far as I can tell, and the only real mother-figure was a near-contemporary, sweet and sensitive but overwhelmed by being thrust into a position of authority well before she was ready for it. There couldn't have been much parental love for all those children, with the father ambitious and driven and no real mother. My father himself was never very good at personal relations of the intimate kind; the feelings were there, but they went unexpressed.
Early in 1884, my father moved with his family back to San Francisco, a city by then of 225,000 with much better educational and medical facilities than Los Angeles could offer the large Meyer family. It was also safer. I remember my father saying of his early days in Los Angeles that everyone carried a Derringer and almost every night someone was shot. But though my grandfather may have been pleased with the move, my father, a young boy of eight, immediately became embattled. He was a loner and a fighter, forced by his family to wear clothes - including a white starched Eton collar - that made him look "different." Older boys at school would put the younger ones in a circle, pitting them against each other. The fights would stop only when someone had a nosebleed, and this was usually my poor father. Nonetheless, he was forced to learn to fight to defend himself, all the while receiving severe reprimands from his father for his rough behavior. These encounters toughened him to the point where, when the family moved to Alameda, to improve his mother's health by removing her from San Francisco's fog, young Eugene outfought the local bully, who had previously ruled the playground. This victory had the dubious effect of making him the top troublemaker, both at school and at home. He led the younger children in rebellion against the housekeeper, generally made mischief, and teased the girls, especially harassing poor Rosalie.
Alameda had done my grandmother no good, and it proved too remote to be practical for my grandfather, so after a short time the family moved back to San Francisco. It was the third change of school for my father. After getting hit in the eye by a baseball, he was forbidden to play, on the grounds that it would worry his mother. Football and sailing on a nearby lake had also been forbidden. He was, however, allowed to take fencing lessons, and boxing lessons from Gentleman Jim Corbett, later heavyweight champion of the world, but these too were stopped when a picture appeared in the paper of the lesson with Corbett, who was seeking publicity. He went on having a difficult time in school, and endured being called a sheeny, along with others who were called wops, micks, and chinks... |
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The New York Times (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-21 00:00>
An extraordinary autobiography... touching... winning... inspiring. |
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. |
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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