The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick 1880-1955

Smith, Richard Norton

ISBN 10: 0395533791 / ISBN 13: 9780395533796

Published by Houghton Mifflin, 1997

Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00095091402

Synopsis:

For most of his varied and colorful career, Colonel Robert R. McCormick was the self-proclaimed emperor of "Chicagoland," a Middle America of his own imagination, forever at odds with the alien East and the flaky West. From the 1920s through the mid-1950s, he was editor and owner of the Chicago Tribune, a joyously combative conservative broadsheet that under his leadership grew to become the most widely read full-size daily in the United States. To admirers he was the scourge of bleeding-heart liberals, an emblem of the Old Order in the age of the New Deal. To detractors he was a half-crazed demagogue whose personal exploitation of a powerful news medium was a flagrant abuse of the public trust. In fact, he was all this -- and more. Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Tribune, The Colonel is the first biography to draw on McCormick's personal papers. Richard Norton Smith has written a vivid, candid, sympathetic life of an American original, a lifelong controversialist whose outspoken views, for better and for worse, shaped the political temper of his times. "I was determined to lead a great life, an exotic life," McCormick wrote, and for once he was guilty of understatement. Patterning himself on his grandfather Joseph Medill, he found fame as a municipal reformer, cleaning up Chicago's water supply. During World War I, he was the sole American correspondent to accompany the Russian Army; later, as an officer of the U.S. First Division, he fought with distinction in the Battle of Cantigny. He was a strident isolationist whose hobby was military strategy, an implacable anglophobe who adored a good fox hunt, a finger-pointing moralist whose private life bordered on the scandalous. As owner-editor of the Tribune, he was a ruthless competitor, yet he was also a First Amendment absolutist who effectively, even heroically, defended the press from government coercion. At the height of his power, he oversaw an empire whose holdings included not only the Tribune but also the New York Daily News, the Washington Times-Herald, a large chunk of Canada, and "the most beautiful office building in the world," Chicago's Tribune Tower. Richard Norton Smith tells McCormick's story with humor, verve, and an eagle eye for revealing detail. Here is McCormick exposing the fiscal crimes of Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, investigating the gangland murder of a corrupt reporter, and holding Henry Ford up to ridicule in "the trial of the century." Here is McCormick at his most indomitable, at war with his nemesis, FDR, who sought unsuccessfully to indict him for treason. The Colonel is a story by turns amazing, amusing, and appalling. As Smith remarks of McCormick's Tribune, it will provoke its readers "to spasms of outrage punctuated by laughter."

Review: Richard Norton Smith is a delightful writer, and The Colonel sparkles from start to finish. This is a terrific book, full of insight and surprise, often funny, consistently fair, and as brimming with life as its Chicago setting. Readers are in for a grand time. - David McCulldugh, Author Of John Adams; ""At last The Colonel gets his due. Smith brings us the fascinating life of a singular American, revealing the complexities of the inner man, how he built a great newspaper company, and how he influenced the world we live in today."" - Michael R. Beschloss, Author Of The Conquerors; ""Richard Norton Smith is everything The Colonel wasn't - judicious, clear-headed, and historically accurate. For all these virtues he's still managed to produce a biography that wonderfully captures his eccentric, pigheaded, impossible (and sometimes even likeable) subject. The Colonel is as big as all Chicago - a fresh, informative, and hugely entertaining book."" - Thomas Mallon, Author Of Mrs. Paine's Garage; ""The best book ever written about the press."" - Hilton Kramer; ""[Smith] never mocks his subject, but neither does he ever extend him more credit than he earned."" - Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R...
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Publication Date: 1997
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Edition: 2nd Edition