Skip to content

Personal History

Personal History

Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different
Click for full-size.

Personal History

by Graham, Katharine

  • Used
  • good
  • Paperback
  • first
Condition
Good
ISBN 10
0375701044
ISBN 13
9780375701047
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Silver Spring, Maryland, United States
2 Copies Available from This Seller
(You can add more at checkout.)
Item Price
£14.81
Or just £13.33 with a
Bibliophiles Club Membership
£4.00 Shipping to USA
Standard delivery: 7 to 14 days

More Shipping Options

Payment Methods Accepted

  • Visa
  • Mastercard
  • American Express
  • Discover
  • PayPal

About This Item

New York: Vintage Books, 1998. 1st Vintage Book Edition. First? Printing. Trade paperback. Good. ix, [1], 642, [2] pages. Wraps. Illustrations. Iindex. Some cover wear and soiling. Katharine Meyer Graham (June 16, 1917 - July 17, 2001) was an American newspaper publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, from 1963 to 1991. Graham presided over the paper as it reported on the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. She was the first twentieth century female publisher of a major American newspaper. Graham's memoir, Personal History, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. Katharine Graham assumed the reins of the company and of the Post after Philip Graham's suicide. She held the title of president and was de facto publisher of the paper from September 1963.[25] She formally held the title of publisher from 1969 to 1979, and that of chairwoman of the board from 1973 to 1991. She became the first female Fortune 500 CEO in 1972, as CEO of the Washington Post company.[26][27] As the only woman to be in such a high position at a publishing company, she had no female role models and had difficulty being taken seriously by many of her male colleagues and employees. Graham outlined in her memoir her lack of confidence and distrust in her own knowledge. The convergence of the women's movement with Graham's control of the Post brought about changes in Graham's attitude and also led her to promote gender equality within her company. Autobiography by the woman who piloted the Washington Post through the crises of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate.

Graham hired Benjamin Bradlee as editor, and cultivated Warren Buffett for his financial advice; he became a major shareholder and something of an eminence grise in the company. Her son Donald was publisher from 1979 until 2000. Derived from a Kirkus review: Gracious, often touchingly ingenuous, at once panoramic and particular, Graham's autobiography absorbingly reconstructs her life of worldly privilege and affective deprivation as the daughter of one formidable man and the wife and widow of another, then chronicles her own rise to the challenges of captaining the Washington Post. Katharine Meyer—her blue blood diluted only slightly by her father's Jewish roots, her development stunted severely by a self- aggrandizing mother—survived the conventions and emotional isolation of a richly endowed girlhood to marry the irreverent Phil Graham, whom she celebrates for liberating her from her unspontaneous self and the weight of her family mythology. It was he who ``put the fix in our lives'' . . . and, shatteringly, put a gun to his head after escalating manic-depression climaxed in his running off with the latest of his unsuspected paramours, leaving Katharine to abject devastation. That she was utterly bereft of social confidence by middle age seems to have been both cause and effect of Phil's defection; nonetheless, she determined to go to work to preserve for her children the Post, which Phil had taken over from her father. (With characteristic modesty and felicity, she extols the ``originality'' of the friend who planted the idea that she could run it.) But also, she quite fell in love with the paper and the burgeoning corporate enterprise. It was an excruciating coming-of-age, because of her constant self-doubt and frankly poor management and because of the magnitude of the events played out on her watch—each revisited in reflective, defensive, parochial detail: the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the pressmen's strike, the company's going public, major acquisition and personnel decisions. Graham's book, like her life, is harnessed to history, political and journalistic (even her best friends were famous). Her myriad stories—discreet to a fault—humanize a whole pantheon of Personalities. Her personal drama, however, upstages the rest.

Synopsis

Personal History is the autobiography of Katharine Graham. It was published in 1997 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 1998. The book received widespread critical acclaim for its candour in dealing with her husband's mental illness, and the challenges she faced in a male-dominated working environment.

Reviews

On Aug 21 2007, Hazelwood_Booksellers said:
An incredible autobiography of an amazing woman. The very personal story of a woman born to wealth and privilege, surprisingly naive, who comes to adulthood in a storybook romance and marriage only to see her beloved husband succumb to manic-depression and suicide. It is also a corporate business story within the personal story of her learn-as-you-go career life as she's thrust into the position of the head of her father's Washington Post newspaper, steering it through some of its most tumultuous times; the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, the Pentagon Papers, and Watergate. And it is a Washington insider's power and political story, with an in-depth look at her relationships with the likes of Warren Buffett, George Schulz, Robert McNamara, fifty years of Presidents and their First Ladies ... and more. A leave-nothing-out intricate book so intriguingly written, with such forthright honesty, that it will keep you turning page after page from 1 through 642.

(Log in or Create an Account first!)

You’re rating the book as a work, not the seller or the specific copy you purchased!

Details

Bookseller
Ground Zero Books US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
29639
Title
Personal History
Author
Graham, Katharine
Format/Binding
Trade paperback
Book Condition
Used - Good
Quantity Available
2
Edition
1st Vintage Book Edition. First? Printing
Binding
Paperback
ISBN 10
0375701044
ISBN 13
9780375701047
Publisher
Vintage Books
Place of Publication
New York
Date Published
1998
Keywords
Publishers, Watergate Scandal, Pentagon Papers, Pulitzer Prize, Journalism, Newspaper, Eugene Meyers, Philip Graham, Meg Greenfield

Terms of Sale

Ground Zero Books

Books are offered subject to prior sale. Satisfaction guaranteed. If you notify us within 7 days that you are not satisfied with your purchase, we will refund your purchase price when you return the item in the condition in which it was sold.

About the Seller

Ground Zero Books

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2005
Silver Spring, Maryland

About Ground Zero Books

Founded and operated by trained historians, Ground Zero Books, Ltd., has for over 30 years served scholars, collectors, universities, and all who are interested in military and political history.

Much of our diverse stock is not yet listed on line. If you can't locate the book or other item that you want, please contact us. We may well have it in stock. We welcome your want lists, and encourage you to send them to us.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Poor
A book with significant wear and faults. A poor condition book is still a reading copy with the full text still readable. Any...
Trade Paperback
Used to indicate any paperback book that is larger than a mass-market paperback and is often more similar in size to a hardcover...

Frequently asked questions

This Book’s Categories

tracking-