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Personal History
by: Katharine Graham |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 070.5092 EAN: 9780375701047 Edition: Reprint ISBN: 0375701044 Label: Vintage Manufacturer: Vintage Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 688 Publication Date: February 24, 1998 Publisher: Vintage Release Date: February 24, 1998 Studio: Vintage Features:
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| Customer Reviews | ||
  - Wonderful History!I listened to this on audiobook, read by the author. It was truly a great listening experience. Her emotion comes through and you really get a sense of her as a person. A true pleasure. Rating: - an extraordinary woman worth learning fromI must have read this book ten times by now but find myself returning to it constantly. Here is a woman who was born into such privilege and wealth that she could have led a perfectly meaningless life. Yet her parents had solid values, she married an ambitious, smart man, and when he died, she oversaw the Washington Post through its most interesting period, the sixties through the eighties. Just reading about the events of her life is like getting the CliffNotes version of American history. The cast of characters is like a Who's Who of influential people, but not once does the reader feel that she's bragging. In many instances she talks frankly about her mistakes, big and small, without giving the impression that her account of the story of self-serving. She talks about her own self absorption and neglect of her two younger children after her husband's mental illness and subsequent suicide. Of particular note is a particularly unflattering description of her written by Robert Redford (who starred in All the President's Men). Redford's letter (quoted in the book) seems to confirm to us -- the readers -- our deepest suspicions about Kay Graham, that she is snobby and blue-blooded to the core, but she explains herself remarkably well without offering excuses. I find it hard not to admire her frankness and willingness to tell us the less flattering bits. Personal History essentially covers her four or five different lives, and she goes into the major events with enormous detail. Every successive life she has is more incredible than the last -- never does the reader feel that she has glossed over parts of the story. In fact, she often goes into elaborate detail and includes dialogue from old letters, etc. One thing I've read in some negative reviews is that she's 'just a spoiled rich girl.' In fact she spends a lot of time making it perfectly clear that she is privileged and that a lot of things she has had in life had little to do with her own abilities -- the acquisition of The Post by her father, for example. But what's remarkable is that she never ran away from what she was supposed to do. And for this -- as well as for her honesty -- she is an inspiration to us all. This is by far my favorite book! Rating:  - Whitewash.. a whitewash by one of the most ruthless power-brokers in the history of American publishing. One reviewer suggested that Mz Graham might be a good role model for girls. Really? I can't help but be reminded of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" in which General Franco is held out as the same. She was never interested in a free press and said as much in a speech at Langley in 1988. And if there was ever any doubt, consider her suppression of the biography authored by Deborah Davis (as difficult to find as another under-the-radar portrait of a demagogue, "L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?"). Rating: - More than just a spoiled rich girl...This book was simply fascinating. I wondered how someone so integral to our country's media could've escaped me... I have to be honest, though: Before someone suggested this title for my book club, I had never heard of Katharine Graham. Upon ordering the book, I did a quick search to learn who she was, and from my two minutes of Googling, I expected her autobiography to be an uninspired list of petty complaints by an out-of-touch American princess. The intriguing first part of the book, which focused on the origins of her mother and father, helped ease the reader into wanting to learn more about this privileged woman; without the family history, I'm not sure I'd have been as interested. By the time Graham was thrust into the position of helming The Washington Post, my assumptions about her life and "privilege" were turned upside-down. To be sure, her life was filled with luxuries and advantages, but the family, social, and personality issues so many of us "regular" people endure affected Graham too. She effortlessly toggles between name-dropping business moguls and politicians and expressing her lifelong struggles with shyness and low self-esteem. She deserved major props for exposing her vulnerabilities despite a proclivity to be "appropriate." Some criticisms: - A portion of the book relates The Post's involvement with uncovering Watergate, but the author makes a great assumption that readers already know the specifics of the Nixon scandal. A short summary of the overall issue would've been appreciated by uninformed people like me (who hadn't been born yet and skipped that day in Government 202) who'd like not to do research about it afterward. - Toward the end of the book, Warren Buffett becomes a major character of the story. Graham comes across as fawning over him, and his presence is disproportionately great when compared to other supposedly main characters of her book. - There are so many people and names in this book that it can be a hard read. Read slowly and take notes if necessary. Rating: - Simply outstandingKatharine Graham's Personal History is by far one of the best autobiographies I've ever read. Her candor about her triumphs and hardships is powerful and at times inspiring. Kay's ability to tell her often dark tale without that 'woe is me' vibe is refreshing. Her writing is quality. There is a good reason why this book won a Pulitzer...it deserved it! |
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