Power, Privilege and the Post: The Katharine Graham Story [Paperback]

Carol Felsenthal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 1999

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to Felsenthal ( Alice Roosevelt Longworth ), Katharine Graham, the imperious media mogul whose empire includes the Washington Post, Newsweek, TV stations and cable systems, was a fragile, withdrawn person, ill-prepared to run a troubled newspaper, when she became publisher of the Post after the suicide of her manic-depressive husband Phil. In this absorbing, gossipy biography, Felsenthal sympathetically portrays Graham (b. 1917) as a survivor of emotional abuse and as a brave fighter for a free press who took tremendous risks by printing the Pentagon Papers and by disregarding pressure from Nixon in covering the Watergate affair. As a girl, she had to prove her mettle constantly to her father, Eugene Meyer, a Jewish Wall Street millionaire, and to her bombastic Lutheran mother, Agnes Ernst Meyer, a "do-gooder liberal" who preached tolerance while harboring "an ugly streak of anti-Semitism" and belittling her children. Felsenthal presents Graham as an "emotionally battered" wife who endured her husband's anti-Semitic slurs and even laughed at the crude jokes he made at her expense. Photos. First serial to Vanity Fair; BOMC featured alternate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 520 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (January 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 188836386X
• ISBN-13: 978-1888363869
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,363,646 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a balance of gossip and substance, May 14, 2001

By 

Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Power, Privilege and the Post: The Katharine Graham Story (Paperback)

Ever since I read Halberstam's the Powers that Be, I wanted to read more in depth about Kay Graham. She is a fascintaing character: taking over the Post after the suicide of her manic depressive husband, she was the one to bring it to greatness. Not only did she overcame fear and terrible personal insecurity, but with Watergate and the Pentagon Papers she earned a place in history. That is not bad for an heiress that everyone dismissed as a figurehead when she took over.

Unfortunately, Felsenthal brings few new revelations to her well researched and long book. The facts are there, as is much of recent US history, and this is extremely well covered. Instead, what she adds is more on the level of back-biting gossip, such as the tales of her dysfunctional children, her fickleness at the office, or her insensitive quips about money ("you mean you have to live on your salary?" she is quoted as snottily and incredulously asking a reporter.) At times, the book has the flavor of personal pique: you can tell that the author doesn't like her subject or resents as her undeserving.

Felsenthal even seems bent on undoing the reputation of her star editor, Ben Bradley, whom she portrays as a capable courtier manipulator of Graham. While this perspective is useful, it appeared biased to me, too consciously against the grain of popular (admittedly perhaps mythic) image. Essentially, she portrays Graham as a twit who will do whatever the last person with whom she spoke advised, hence Bradley knew to be "the last person" to speak to her. I do not doubt that there is much truth to this, but Graham also did come down on the right side when she made the big decisions. Is her entire image romantic PR puffery? The author seems bent on convincing the reader that this was so.

However, if you don't know the story of Kay Graham, this is a solid introduction. Recommended with reservation.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The single most useful book about the Post., January 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Power, Privilege and the Post: The Katharine Graham Story (Paperback)

I've read every book I could find about Katharine Graham and the Washington Post -- and if you're only going to read one, this is it. Complex business dealings are explained clearly, people are approached evenhandedly, and scandals (public and private) are discussed without either shirking or sensationalism (and with a lot of citations.) The book focuses on the personalities of these fascinating people, making for a riveting story.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How To Become a Successful Businesswoman, November 23, 2001

By 

fredric a maxwell - See all my reviews

This review is from: Power, Privilege and the Post: The Katharine Graham Story (Paperback)

Biographer Carol Felsenthal turned her fine talents ro Katherine Graham and produced a top-notch bio, one which the reader can easily understand, and feel for, the housewife-turned-Fortune 500 businesswoman. What sticks in my mind is how Graham's distant mother finally decided to talk to her daughter about menstruation, to which Kay replied, "I started that last year."
Rich detail such as this makes it easy to see why Readers Digest condensed the book, and opens up a controversy over just how much of Felsenthal's research was co-opted by Graham herself to write, or have ghostwritten, her "Personal History." Felsenthal's objectivity adds to Graham's life story in a way only a detached biographer can. If one wants a map of how a shy woman can succeede in the business world, one can do no better than to read Felsenthal's illuminating text.