Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power

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This is the first major life of Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) since W. A. Swanberg's 1967 biography, but it's far more than merely an updated portrait. Its two-fold achievement is to restore a giant figure in the history of American journalism, business, and politics--a man who's been half-lost to modern memory apart from the prize that he created and that bears his name--and to report, for the first time, the whole truth about several fascinating episodes and key facets of Pulitzer's life. It's a stunning, at times mind-blowing biography that wears its heroic research and enterprising detective work lightly.

In its late 19th/early 20th century heyday, Pulitzer's New York World had the combined national clout and prestige of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post rolled into one. With today's newspaper industry enduring a profound crisis of confidence and authority in the face of economic crisis and a new-media onslaught, this is an ideal moment to revisit the story of the man who, more than any other, created modern journalism, and became the first fantastically wealthy, world-spanning press lord.

Given the brisk pacing, swift narrative momentum, and often-thrilling drama of this biography, it's impossible not to think of the movies while reading Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power. Thanks in large part to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, we're much more familiar with the story of William Randolph Hearst, Pulitzer's upstart rival, than we are with Pulitzer. But in James McGrath Morris's telling, Welles might as well have based his great film on Pulitzer. It has the same outlines of a young man's meteoric rise--Pulitzer was a Hungarian Jew who arrived in America penniless and friendless--and of a crusading idealist's gradual transformation into a bitter, isolated, self-pitying plutocrat. (Once a rags-to-riches champion of social justice and the poor, Pulitzer later mercilessly crushed a strike called by impoverished street-urchin newsboys.) But just when you begin to recoil from the contemptible figure Pulitzer has become, this biography unfolds the riveting story of the clash between Pulitzer's World, which reported on alleged corruption in the building of the Panama Canal, and an enraged President Theodore Roosevelt, who unleashed the full legal might of the federal government in an attempt to convict and imprison Pulitzer for criminal libel. It's like a Gilded-Age version of All the President's Men, except the commander-in-chief is relentlessly stalking the journalists instead of the other way around. Amazingly, this crucial episode in the history of the First Amendment, freedom of the press, and abuse of presidential power has never been fully told, but James McGrath Morris (who resorted to the threat of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to uncover government records that had been hidden for a century) gives us the complete blow-by-blow story. Lastly, I couldn't help recalling The Aviator and the strange life of Howard Hughes (as it happens, director Martin Scorsese is James McGrath Morris's brother-in-law) while reading how Pulitzer was suddenly struck with blindness at the pinnacle of his power, turning into a phobic, self-pitying recluse who railed against his wife and family, tormented servants, couldn't endure the slightest noise, and spent decades restlessly cruising the world in ocean liners and giant yachts in flight from his demons.

Joseph Pulitzer had a life full of contradictions, triumphs, and tragedy, and it's all here, from the terrible flaws to the giant achievements. Pulitzer created the model of crusading journalism as a pillar of democracy. And despite his many lapses, he also established an ideal of accuracy, truthfulness, and disinterested fairness that to this day characterizes the best reporting. This is essential reading for every journalist and a treasure trove for every student of American history.

Joseph Pulitzer's story is a classic American rags-to-riches-to-sellout saga. A Jewish immigrant from Hungary, Pulitzer made his way in the rough-and-tumble newspaper business of Missouri after the Civil War. Allying his newspapers with the "little man" against the big shots, Pulitzer invented the irreverent, aggressive, sensational daily press of America at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Becoming fabulously wealthy himself, Pulitzer abandoned his allegiance to the little man and his newspapers ossified. Suffering blindness from two detached retinas, Pulitzer descended into eccentricities, depression, and a sharp alienation from his family.

James McGrath Morris tells this exciting and cautionary story with great judgment and wit. At a time when our own media seem to have lost their way -- gutless broadcast news, shrinking print media, immature Internet vehicles -- the time is ripe for someone to refashion how we learn about the world, and how we think about it, the way Pulitzer did. It's a terrific book -- read it.

In the style of Ron Chernow and Jeane Strouse, James McGrath Morris has provided a robust and sterling account of one of the most important, yet very complicated giants in American history. In the hands of this sublime biographer the tale of Hungarian-born Joseph Pulitzer leaps in grand fashion from each page as we follow Pulitzer across the Atlantic in 1864 and then are whisked through a life that saw its fair share of triumphs and tragedies. While most people know of the award that bears his name, readers will find on these pages that Pulitzer was more than a newspaperman turned mogul, a man driven with ambition to whatever endeavor or cause he pursued. Utilizing sources never before mined Morris literally fleshes out the life of Pulitzer not only within the context of his times but with a nuanced and balanced portrait of Pulitzer the mortal, a man who could easily turn on the charm, win your trust, but could also be a nefarious liar. Chronicling his ascent to power and fame in the arena of nascent modern journalism readers will no doubt have mixed emotions as Puiltzer descends into severe neurosis and lonliness, making his life all the more tragic. A must read, PULITZER: A LIFE IN POLITICS, PRINT, AND POWER, belongs alongside the recent monumental biographies that have been penned about the pantheon of greats including J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Joseph Pulitzer is famous today not for what he did but for the prize that bears his name and is awarded to writers for extraordinary journalism. The man might even be confused with another Alfred Nobel who also has a prize named after him. James McGrath Morris's, //Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power// attempts to remedy the public's ignorance regarding one of the most important and powerful men of the early twentieth century.

Morris's biography is not the first of Pulitzer, a man who came to America penniless as a teen, fought in the Civil War, became a journalist in the "far west," failed as a politician, succeeded as a newspaper mogul, and finally became an invalid and shut-in, but it does take advantage of new scholarship as well as recently found primary sources. //Pulitzer// is a hefty tome that attempts to get at the man behind all the roles. It acknowledges the greatness of Mr. Pulitzer but doesn't try to justify any of his flaws. The end result is a comprehensive overview of this complicated man's life, revealing a person greater than the title, "yellow journalist," which Pulitzer tried to expunge through the award he created.

Reviewed by Jonathon Howard

I read this book about a month ago and just read the many articulate reviews published here which have detailed what has been covered within the pages of this book. Given that I am probably going to rehash some of the information already provided.
This is a remarkable bio even given that it was published during a recent period with more than a fair share of outstanding bios and histories. Based upon some of my own reading choices I've gone through quite a few books that have seemingly married issues such as life stories, public policy, journalism, and newspaper publishing. What gives this book a certain distinction is that it reflects modern newspaper reporting/publishing from an earlier time time frame than even the Hearst era. It heralds to the era of publishing giants and newspaper syndicates that is sometimes viewed as fading in our times based on the fact that our information is obtained off the internet and newspapers are seeing their circulation plummet.
Pulitzer's story is compelling and seemingly a study in contradictions. A jew from Hungary, Pulitzer came to the United States in his teens and fought in the civil war. Afterward he migrated to central Missouri and eventually landed in St. Louis where his publishing career began in earnest when he bought his first newspaper. A defender of the common man, he took on the common man's concerns and causes. As his holdings and wealth increased he morphed into a power wielding mogul who worked harder and more vigorously to defend his empire from things like trade unions. Still there were the efforts to grab onto a good story and make it a great one and keep the public aware and interested. There was also a flirtation with yellow journalism and sensationalism which guaranteed good newspaper revenues. Eventually Pulitzer's empire was permanently based in New York and he was the ruler of his own fifedom. In the ensuing years, he became more isolated from his wife, family, and the people around him. Detached retinas in both his eyes led to blindness (a particularly cruel irony given his life's work) and his later years were spent in physical and emotional darkness as he was enveloped in pain.
Often overshadowed by his competitor Hearst whose persona has grown to mythic proportion, this was a story just begging to be told. I really didn't know all that much about Pulitzer at the outset, but walked away having a better sense of what his accomplishments were as well as what his failings were. Small things surprised me as did a lot of the big things such as the story about fraudlent dealings relating to the construction of the Panama Canal. Overall I got a sense of how quickly the newspaper industry evolved and how many parallels can be drawn to the way stories are reported and handled today.
James McGrath Morris, the author, did a good job pulling all the facts together and fleshing out the person who was better known by his self-named award. This book is a great resource for anyone interested in american history, journalism, newspapers, moguls, influence peddling, print media.

Joseph Pulitzer is, paradoxically, one of the most influential and least well-understood of any of our national heroes. He is, in many ways, the architect of modern mass media; the creator of the genuinely independent press; the man who introduced a moral dimension to American journalism; and probably the greatest promoter of newspaper-reading and news consumption in history. And yet, we know very little about the man himself. He isn't like anyone else on the national scene in the 19th century--he has no useful comparatives. It's as though the historians don't really know what to make of him. As a result, he is criminally understudied--in the century since his death, there have only been two good biographies of him. This is one of them.

James McGrath Morris is not only a terrific writer, he's a muckraker of a degree that would make Pulitzer himself proud, and I mean that as a compliment. He brings to bear a wealth of previously unused and undiscovered primary source material that help fill in the gaps and bring to life his brilliant, tortured, enigmatic, and complex subject. Not only do we learn more about Joseph Pulitzer from this book than from any other, we feel as though we come to know the man himself, which is no small accomplishment.

No one book can do Joseph Pulitzer justice. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, Pulitzer is large. He contains multitudes. Among the many virtues of Morris' superb and painstaking work is that it makes the reader want to learn ever more about Joseph Pulitzer--the man, his work, and his legacy. It is my hope that this book becomes the vanguard of a spate of new work on Joseph Pulitzer, who is more timely a subject than ever before, especially when we, as a nation, have lost faith in our government and in our media to tell us the truth.

This book is fascinating on so many levels. It's a great chronicle of an important part of American history -- the birth of mass media. It's a compelling portrait of a media giant who rivaled Hearst and Howard Hughes in his eccentricities. And it's a classic American Dream tale. I highly recommend this biography!

"I don't care a damn how ugly he makes me, but he shouldn't misrepresent me," Joseph Pulitzer once told a sculptor working on his likeness. "There are elements of romance and tragedy." And so there are, aplenty, in this wonderful, compulsively readable biography. James McGrath Morris captures the romance and tragedy of Pulitzer's life, his era, and his profession. This is truly an American rags-to-riches story: A Hungarian immigrant, Pulitzer made his way to this country as a mercenary. After a short stint at soldiering, he ended up sleeping in doorways, shoveling coal, and tending mules. He taught himself English in the St. Louis Mercantile Library, got a toehold at a German-language newspaper, and never looked back. At times, I felt like I was reading a novel by Edith Wharton or Henry James, from the description of the glittering "Patriarch's Ball" at Delmonico's on 5th Avenue (and ostentatious parties where hosts wrap gold bracelets in their guests' dinner napkins) to darker passages dealing with the open antisemitism directed at Pulitzer and his newspapers.

But this is not only an outstanding portrait of the time. The author has uncovered extraordinary new materials, and he offers a nuanced and complex account of Pulitzer's bruising battles with Teddy Roosevelt and what the publisher himself called "that so-called militarism." As this country picks up the pieces after yet another foreign war championed by the media--newspapers included--an understanding of this episode is not only fascinating; it is essential.

Since I read and liked Morris' last book about the Rose Man of Sing Sing, I thought I'd give this one a try. Good news: this is one of those smooth-reading BIG bios. Pulitzer's life is not what I expected... the prizes given out in his name annually have indeed scrubbed the family moniker clean. The real Pulitzer could be vindictive, petty, grandiose, funny... relentless and irascible also come to mind. As you slip into the book and move past the childhood in Hungary, the United States after the Civil War--the politicians, the dealmakers, the press--all start to envelope you... and you follow this gangly quirky ambitious man on his adventures. He changed journalism for better and for worse. His newspapers were read; his fortune was made but he was frequently loathed and ridiculed.
Morris researched hard, right down to finding a fellow with a cigar box full of Pulitzer business receipts, and down to unearthing long-suppressed love letters by Pulitzer's wife to another man.

A tangle between two goliaths: one self-made, visibly neurotic, an up from the street immigrant with an inbred sense of the injustice of society -- the other a scion of power, overbred for greatness, with an ego the size of the great outdoors and a self-righteous champion of Right against Wrong...this is the backdrop of the titantic rivalry between the Progressive era's two great reformers, Democrat Joseph Pulitizer and the accidental Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, that sets the stage for Jamie McGrath Morris' vibrant biography, Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power.

Morris' biography is rich with the dichotomies of the late 19th and early 20th century: How the name of a purveyor of Yellow Journalism in his lifetime could come to epitomize in posterity the highest public standard of objective reporting and freedom of the press. The era itself is one of the turning points in American history, as the nation, goaded by relentless headlines of Pulitzer's World and TR's extraordinary Presidency, managed to beat back the Trusts, build the Panama Canal, and lay for foundation for the irrigation of America's far west.

Morris' Pulitzer is a great read, filled with passion and a big stage--a wonderful biography of one the most curious, unlikely shapers of American history.

This volume ranks its somewhat like a first time author, James McGrath Morris, up with Ron Chernow, David McCullough, and H.W. Brands. I do not believe there is a more complete work on Pulitzer. Besides the life of Pulitzer the parallel story, a history of modern journalism runs through this biography.

Morris traces Joseph Pulitzer from his roots in Hungary to his arrival in the US as a Civil War conscript through his career in the dual arts of journalism and politics. He is a hard driver of himself and others. Pulitzer is impossible to work for, be related to or be around in general. His generosity and concern for the common man stand in contrast to the many stories that illustrate his lack of consideration for others. As he aged, the emotional cruelty he dished out seemed to intensify. As he became wealthy, he became more sympathetic to the needs of business.

Pulitzer's relationship with his brother Albert certainly raised my curiosity. Here are two brothers, both arriving separately in the US not speaking English, and both independently (of each other) establishing successful English language newspapers. Joseph's treatment of his brother, like his treatment of almost everyone else, is abominable. Hopefully, someone, maybe Morris, will produce a book on this relationship alone.

The chapter on TR Roosevelt and the Canal Zone was fascinating. A movie could be made on this episode alone with wonderful espionage scenes in Panama and Colombia. Roosevelt was wrong to use the apparatus of government to prosecute, but the newspaper (and perhaps Pulitzer) was equally wrong to hammer away on unsubstantiated charges. In this instance, Pulitzer finally met his match.

Through Pulitzer's story you see both the power and limitations of the press. It is clear that it is not the pen that is mightier than the sword, but the ownership of that pen and the apparatus to distribute the writing. You also see the limitations of this power. Pulitzer could get himself elected but not always, and his editorials could only make a deciding factor in close elections. He had to worry about competition and as today, he withheld stories when he felt they would spur the ire of someone important to his business or as in the period of the Canal related litigation, legal concerns.

The story is huge and Morris delivers it at a good pace. It was hard to remember all the reappearing journalists and editors, but the good index helped.

I highly recommend this book for readers of biography and history. I'd like to see it nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

The standard high school American History course speaks extensively about the Robber Barons, but hardly mentions Pulitzer who used the power of the press to advocate for the workingman and against the monopolies and trusts that ruthlessly dominated the country through the late 1800s. Morris' biography reintroduces us to this important figure in the development of a modern press and in politics. The illnesses and ailments that diminished him by the 1890s may have reduced his ability to contribute, but his influence still remained significant. Moreover, every time Pulitzer seemed to be on a path that caused me to lose respect for him as a person, he seemed to resurrect his old fire and commitment to responsible government and fairness and take a surprisingly positive action. His battle with Theodore Roosevelt over freedom of the press has been ignored even by some of Roosevelt's biographers, but should not be.
Having just read Harold Evans' My Paper Chase which traces the development of the press from pre--World War II England to present day America, I found Morris' work to be a fascinating prequel that sets the stage for a broader picture of why an independent media is critical to the survival of a democratic government.

A conventional biography of a prominent man in American history of late 19th century and early 20th.

The author, James McGrath Morris, clearly lays out the facts of Joseph Pulitzer's life, with an emphasis slightly more on the personal than on the times.

One will learn some worthwhile things from reading this book: how the Union enlisted European immigrants to help fight the Civil War; the way the Statue of Liberty came to be built at last; the fact that Teddy Roosevelt was deeply flawed as evidenced by his misuse of federal libel law against Pulitzer; and, the genesis of the famous Pulitzer Prizes.

Still, after investing the time to read this book, I doubt if I would redo the effort. Joseph Pulitzer just is not worth it. He was difficult with employees, bad to members of his family, and, all in all, an extremely rich and self-centered jerk.

If you read one book this year, this is the one to savor. It will inform, thrill and entertain you with stories and insights that will linger long after you finish the last page. This is destined to become a classic and it will surely be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize itself. I can not recommend this book enough.

After the gripping ROSE MAN OF SING SING, James McGrath Morris's previous book, I wondered who he would tackle next. What subject could be more fascinating than Charles Chapin (the titular "rose man") for professional accomplishment, personal psychodrama, and narrative scope?

The answer: Joseph Pulitzer.

The result: defintive.

Simply put, this is everything a biography should be: scrupulously researched, consistently readable, with a subject fully deserving of such sustained attention.

My only question now, Mr. Morris: who's next?

If you enjoy biography and history, this book will provide you with days of pure pleasure. Morris not only makes the reader feel as if he is a bystander at the events described, but also gives real insight into the political and social environment of the times. And what a time it was. Wild machinations in politics and society and the evolution of Pulitzer into a certifiable neurotic madman, fantastically wealthy, controlling his family and newspaper employees from his increasingly cloistered life on yachts and rented European mansions. A fantastic read.

Given last week's awarding of the Pulitzer Prizes (congratulations New York Times and Washington Post), now seemed like a good time to look deeper into the life of the award's namesake, Joseph Pulitzer.

We begin by pointing out that there has not been a complete biography published on the turn-of-the-century media scion in nearly forty years. That is, until the recent release of James McGrath Morris' new book `Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power.' (Harper). (A book, much like Walter Issakson's `Einstein,' that is at least partially the result of the discovery of a mass of new papers, in this case, discovered in the incestertial archives of Pulitzer's late brother, Albert.)

In it, Morris (an award winning biographer and editor of the publication `The Biographer's Craft') covers the range of Pulitzer's life from his arrival as a Jewish Hungarian immigrant to America in 1864, to his early days in St. Louis political circles to his 1878 purchase at auction of the St. Louis Evening Dispatch (which he later merged to form the region's Post-Dispatch), his eventual move to and creation of a New York power-base with the New York World, to his ultimate untimely bout with blindness and an eventual lonely death.

Along the way, Morris details the vast influences on Pulitzer's life, from the emergence of the industrial revolution, to his calls for political reform to his many run-ins with powerful political figures (even resulting in then President Teddy Roosevelt attempting to put Pulitzer in prison for his many anti-TR pontifications!) Eerily reminiscent of some of the media barons of today, Pulitzer was both an engaging activist and a sometimes pugnacious media lord (a precursor to the Murdochs and Turners of today's media world) though his ultimate demise much more closely resembles the life of another tormented recluse, Howard Hughes.

Either way, young journalists or even the prize winners themselves, would be well served by Morris' detailed account of a man who long ago forged the way for the Hearsts, Paleys, Luces and the other media moguls of the 20th century to do what they did in the name of journalist endeavor. And for all those who know little more than the name (much like, say, Alfred Nobel), `Pulitzer' fills the gaps in an important piece of our domestic history.