Personal HIstory

Another Couldn't-Put-Down book. I was led to this book when reading the biography of Warren Buffet, "Snowball", previously reported on. He was a very good friend of Graham's until her death in 2001. I seem to be reading a lot of biography's lately.

Katharine Graham, “Personal History”, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1997, 625 Pages.

From Wikipedia:
Personal History is the autobiography of Katharine Graham, born 1917. This autobiography was published in 1997 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography in 1998. The book received widespread critical acclaim for its candor in dealing with her husband's mental illness (manic-depressive who committed suicide), and the challenges she faced in a male-dominated working environment. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, for more than two decades, overseeing its most famous period, the Watergate coverage.

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 Johnson, especially Johnson's appointment as Kennedy's running-mate;
• Phil's mental illness and eventual suicide;
• Graham's evolution from a housewife to the chairman of a major publishing company;
• her growing awareness of feminist issues;
• the legal battle over the Pentagon Papers;
• The Post's coverage of Watergate; and
• the 1975-1976 pressmen's strike at the Post.