Morris, James McGrath. Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power.
Librarian Bob has reviewed this NYT highlighted article.
In this Internet era where daily newspaper circulation has declined and many such institutions have closed it is helpful to remember a time when the printed word reigned and publishers were regarded as royalty. Joseph Pulitzer, once a teenage immigrant from Hungary, became such a giant. Morris chronicles how after Civil War service Pulitzer learned English at the St. Louis Mercantile Library, was elected to the Missouri legislature, and later bought the first of numerous newspapers. His New York World had the largest circulation of any paper in the 1880s largely due to Pulitzer’s understanding the new demographic of immigrant and female readers. Pulitzer depicted Theodore Roosevelt as a demagogue which eventually enraged the President into urging a Justice Department investigation. Such scrutiny was one of many troubles in Pulitzer’s last years along with fruitlessly seeking a cure for blindness and estrangement from a family he had long treated callously.
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