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| Genre/Form: | Biography |
|---|---|
| Named Person: | Joseph Pulitzer; Joseph Pulitzer; Joseph Pulitzer |
| Material Type: | Biography, Internet resource |
| Document Type: | Book, Internet Resource |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Denis Brian |
| ISBN: | 0471332003 9780471332008 |
| OCLC Number: | 47140669 |
| Description: | viii, 438 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. |
| Contents: | Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Joseph Pulitzer and his "Indegoddampendent" world -- The fighting immigrant -- Upright, spirited, and dangerous -- Survives fire and marries -- Buys St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- President Garfield assassinated -- Jesse James "shot like a dog" -- Pulitzer takes over the world -- Puts a democrat in the White House -- Saves Statue of Liberty -- Haymarket Square massacre -- Nellie Bly goes crazy -- Tries to save his sight -- "An instrument of justice, a terror to crime" -- Nellie Bly races around the world -- Running the world by remote control -- Pulitzer's "Satanic journalism" -- Prevents war between the United States and Britain -- Fighting crime and William Randolph Hearst -- War fever -- Americans at war in Cuba -- For the Boers, against the British -- "Accuracy! Accuracy!! Accuracy!!!" -- President McKinley assassinated -- "Find a man who gets drunk and hire him" -- Euphemisms for abortion -- Breaking in Frank Cobb -- Unmasking corrupt insurance companies -- "I liked the way he swore" -- Protesting jingo agitation -- Secret double life of Rockefeller's father -- Roosevelt tries to send Pulitzer to prison -- "The big man of all American newspapers" --Roosevelt seeks revenge -- Victory! The last days -- The aftermath -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index. |
| Responsibility: | Denis Brian. |
| More information: |
Abstract:
Reviews
Publisher Synopsis
A well-told life of the early media tycoon, whose influence-though not his empire-has endured to the present.<br>Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) lived a life that, in the words of biographer Brian (Einstein: A Life, 1996), "often resembled a fable." At 17, he crossed the waters to American, enticed to join the flagging Union Army in exchange for a bounty and citizenship; just before landing in Boston, he jumped ship, swam across the icy harbor, and presented himself directly to the enlistment officers so that he would not have to split the bounty with the agent who recruited him. Charming and well-educated, he easily won his commanders' trust. After the war, penniless and without prospects, he made his way to St. Louis, where he worked his way up from gravedigger and laborer to reporter for a German-language daily. In 1878 he bought the ailing St. Louis Post-Dispatch for $2,500 and started making a name for himself as a publisher. A born muckraker, he magnified minor-league tales to scandalous proportions, insisting that he was serving the public good by revealing the misdeeds of the powerful and influential. (An example: A minister who had just taken a swig of cold medicine took a seat on a streetcar. The young woman next to him, offended by the smell of alcohol, took another seat. End of story-but the Post-Dispatch's headline? "A Shocking Story of a Divine.") The reporters Pulitzer hired, among them Nellie Bly, Stephen Crane, and Irwin S. Cobb, served him well as he went head-to-head with ferociously anti-Semitic rival publisher William Randolph Hearst, played at king-making, warmongering, and politics, and made a huge fortune with which he endowed the prize that bears name, as well as Columbia University's famed School of Journalism.<br>A solid biography, of interest to student of journalism and American history. ("Kirkus Reviews," July 15, 2001)<p>Joseph Pulitzer emigrated to the United States from his native Hungary in 1864 for a bounty offered by Union army recrui Read more...
