Katharine graham personal history review

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Phil graham

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Personal History: A Memoir

May 3, 2009

This book was over six hundred pages and I enjoyed them all. While Katharine Graham's autobiography is ostensibly her own history, it's also the history of our country. Beginning with her father, Eugene Meyer, and his close dealings with the Hoover Administration and going all the way through her own birds-eye view of various presidents, including Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and, most fascinating of all, Nixon.

Graham's life was supposed to be much different. Married to Phil Graham who ran her family's paper, the Washington Post, with four children, she thought she would be mother, wife and hostess. Sadly, Phil's little understood bipolar disease created havoc for the family before causing him to take his own life. She was thrust into the position of taking over the Washington Post.

Vast in scope and yet filled with personal insights (President Kennedy sent a plane to bring Phil back to Washington when he had a public mental breakdown), it's a fascinating look at the way government really works, in the salons and dining rooms of

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Personal History

An extraordinarily frank, honest, and generous book by one of America's most famous and admired women -- a book that is, as its title suggests, composed of both personal memoir and history.

It is the story of Graham's parents: the multimillionaire father who left private business and government service to buy and restore the down-and-outWashington Post, and the formidable, self-absorbed mother who was more interested in her political and charity work, and her passionate friendships with men like Thomas Mann and Adlai Stevenson, than in her children.

It is the story of howThe Washington Poststruggled to succeed -- a fascinating and instructive business history as told from the inside (the paper has been run by Graham herself, her father, her husband, and now her son).

It is the story of Phil Graham -- Kay's brilliant, charismatic husband (he clerked for two Supreme Court justices) -- whose plunge into manic-depression, betrayal, and eventual suicide is movingly and charitably recounted.

Best of all, it is the story of Kay Graham herself. She was br

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Personal History

Autobiography by Katharine Graham

"Personal history" redirects here. For the trade association of those engaged in writing personal histories, see Association of Personal Historians.

Personal History is the 1997 autobiography of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. It won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography,^[1] and 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.

Themes

The main themes of the book include:

Graham's complex and often difficult relationship with her mother;
her family's involvement with The Washington Post from 1933 onwards;
her relationship with her husband Philip Graham;
Graham and Phil's relationships with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, especially Johnson's appointment as Kennedy's running-mate;
Philip's mental illness and eventual suicide;
Graham's evolution from a housewife to the chairman of a major publishing company;
her growing awareness of femin