5
1
9.99
In Stock
Overview
Few American newspapers, perhaps none, have matched the New York Herald Tribune in the crispness of its writing and editing, the bite of its commentators, the range of its coverage and the clarity of its typography. The "Trib", as it was affectionately called, raised newspapering to an art form. It had an influence and importance out of all proportion to its circulation. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln went to great lengths to retain the support of its co-founder, Horace Greeley. President Eisenhower felt it was such an important institution and Republican organ that he helped broker its sale to its last owner, multimillionaire John Hay Whitney.
The Trib's spectacularly distinguished staffers and contributors included Karl Marx, Tom Wolfe, Walter Lippmann, Dorothy Thompson, Virgil Thomson, Eugenia Sheppard, Red Smith, Heywood Broun, Walter Kerr, Homer Bigart, and brothers Joseph and Stewart Alsop. At the close of World War II, the Herald Tribune, the marriage of two newspapers that had done more than any others to create modern daily journalism, was at its apex of power and prestige. Yet just twenty-one years later, its influence still palpable in every newsroom across the nation, the Trib was gone.
This is the story The Paper, a 1986 finalist of the National Book Award for Nonfiction and winner of the George Polk Prize, tells.
"Probably the best book ever written about an American newspaper. But it is more than that — a brilliant piece of social history that recounts in vivid and telling detail the changing conception of 'news' in America... The book is chockablock with marvelous yarns... And what a cast of characters Kluger has to work with... Some of the most vivid pages in The Paper are Kluger's portraits of these arresting personalities." — J. Anthony Lukas, The Boston Globe
"Monumental... with a narrative sweep that is always absorbing and sometimes breathtaking... What invigorates this history is Mr. Kluger's enthusiasm for his subject, which is apparent everywhere in the loving detail with which he tells the story... and in the liveliness of the prose with which he profiles some of the Tribune's more unusual personalities." — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
"Engrossing... if there is a better book about an American newspaper, I am unaware of it... It is loaded to the gunnels with newspaper anecdotes, but at its core The Paper is a book about the relationship between the press and the powerful, the press and the wealthy." — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"The romance of The Front Page, genteel anti-Semitism, the disaster of newspaper labor relations, and the rise and fall of newspaper fortunes. All are there in The Paper. It is irresistible." — Anthony Lewis
"Compelling... most delightfully so when Mr. Kluger is limning the words and deeds of the people who made The Paper crackle with vitality for more than a century... He does a remarkable job of bringing these people to life on the printed page." — David Shaw, The New York Times Book Review
"Remarkable... a fascinating account of a greatness that once was... This book will hold you in its narrative grip as you revel in a story of a grand venture and epic characters... Here the history of a newspaper is a graphic presentation of a nation's life." — Kirkus Reviews
"Richard Kluger is uniquely qualified to tell this tale... He brings a novelist's imagination to some vivid material." — Paul Gray, Time Magazine
"Fascinating from start to finish, the best book about American journalism since Swanberg's Citizen Hearst. Huge and engrossing." — Larry Lee, San Francisco Chronicle
"A magnificently romantic history not only of the ill-fated New York Herald Tribune but of New York newspapering generally... peopled with unforgettable heroes and knaves." — Robert Sherrill, Chicago Sun-Times
The Trib's spectacularly distinguished staffers and contributors included Karl Marx, Tom Wolfe, Walter Lippmann, Dorothy Thompson, Virgil Thomson, Eugenia Sheppard, Red Smith, Heywood Broun, Walter Kerr, Homer Bigart, and brothers Joseph and Stewart Alsop. At the close of World War II, the Herald Tribune, the marriage of two newspapers that had done more than any others to create modern daily journalism, was at its apex of power and prestige. Yet just twenty-one years later, its influence still palpable in every newsroom across the nation, the Trib was gone.
This is the story The Paper, a 1986 finalist of the National Book Award for Nonfiction and winner of the George Polk Prize, tells.
"Probably the best book ever written about an American newspaper. But it is more than that — a brilliant piece of social history that recounts in vivid and telling detail the changing conception of 'news' in America... The book is chockablock with marvelous yarns... And what a cast of characters Kluger has to work with... Some of the most vivid pages in The Paper are Kluger's portraits of these arresting personalities." — J. Anthony Lukas, The Boston Globe
"Monumental... with a narrative sweep that is always absorbing and sometimes breathtaking... What invigorates this history is Mr. Kluger's enthusiasm for his subject, which is apparent everywhere in the loving detail with which he tells the story... and in the liveliness of the prose with which he profiles some of the Tribune's more unusual personalities." — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
"Engrossing... if there is a better book about an American newspaper, I am unaware of it... It is loaded to the gunnels with newspaper anecdotes, but at its core The Paper is a book about the relationship between the press and the powerful, the press and the wealthy." — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"The romance of The Front Page, genteel anti-Semitism, the disaster of newspaper labor relations, and the rise and fall of newspaper fortunes. All are there in The Paper. It is irresistible." — Anthony Lewis
"Compelling... most delightfully so when Mr. Kluger is limning the words and deeds of the people who made The Paper crackle with vitality for more than a century... He does a remarkable job of bringing these people to life on the printed page." — David Shaw, The New York Times Book Review
"Remarkable... a fascinating account of a greatness that once was... This book will hold you in its narrative grip as you revel in a story of a grand venture and epic characters... Here the history of a newspaper is a graphic presentation of a nation's life." — Kirkus Reviews
"Richard Kluger is uniquely qualified to tell this tale... He brings a novelist's imagination to some vivid material." — Paul Gray, Time Magazine
"Fascinating from start to finish, the best book about American journalism since Swanberg's Citizen Hearst. Huge and engrossing." — Larry Lee, San Francisco Chronicle
"A magnificently romantic history not only of the ill-fated New York Herald Tribune but of New York newspapering generally... peopled with unforgettable heroes and knaves." — Robert Sherrill, Chicago Sun-Times
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940162424260 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Plunkett Lake Press |
| Publication date: | 04/12/2021 |
| Series: | The Paper , #1 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Born in Paterson, NJ in 1934, Richard Kluger grew up in Manhattan, graduated from the Horace Mann School and Princeton University, where he won honors as an English literature major and his principal interest was the undergraduate newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, of which he served as chairman in 1955-56. He withdrew from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where he had been campus correspondent for The New York Times, to join The Wall Street Journal as a copy editor and in 1957 married the former Phyllis Schlain. After launching and operating a weekly newspaper in Rockland County, NY for two years before selling it, he worked as a reporter for the New York Post and Forbes magazine and then became the literary editor of the New York Herald Tribune and its Book Week review section. When the Tribune went out of business in 1966, Kluger entered the book industry, serving as executive editor of Simon & Schuster, editor-in-chief of Atheneum, and publisher of Charterhouse Books, his own imprint in conjunction with David McKay Co.
As a moonlighting author, Kluger published two novels, When the Bough Breaks and National Anthem, satirizing American social mores. Moved by the social upheavals sweeping across the US in the 1960s, Kluger left book publishing and devoted six years, starting in 1968, to researching and writing Simple Justice (1976), generally regarded as the definitive account of the US Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing racially segregated public schools. His second nonfiction work was The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune (1986). Both were National Book Award finalists. Ashes to Ashes, his following book, is a critical history of the cigarette industry and its lethal toll on the public’s health; it won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1997. Kluger went on to write three other works of history, dealing with the relentless expansion of America’s national boundaries, a tragic mid-19th century clash between white settlers and tribal natives in territorial Washington, and the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger and the origins of press freedom in the New World.
Of his seven novels, the most widely read are Members of the Tribe and The Sheriff of Nottingham, both anchored in historical events. Two of his novels were co-authored with his wife Phyllis, who often assisted him with research for his historical works. The Klugers have lived near San Francisco since 2003.
As a moonlighting author, Kluger published two novels, When the Bough Breaks and National Anthem, satirizing American social mores. Moved by the social upheavals sweeping across the US in the 1960s, Kluger left book publishing and devoted six years, starting in 1968, to researching and writing Simple Justice (1976), generally regarded as the definitive account of the US Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing racially segregated public schools. His second nonfiction work was The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune (1986). Both were National Book Award finalists. Ashes to Ashes, his following book, is a critical history of the cigarette industry and its lethal toll on the public’s health; it won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1997. Kluger went on to write three other works of history, dealing with the relentless expansion of America’s national boundaries, a tragic mid-19th century clash between white settlers and tribal natives in territorial Washington, and the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger and the origins of press freedom in the New World.
Of his seven novels, the most widely read are Members of the Tribe and The Sheriff of Nottingham, both anchored in historical events. Two of his novels were co-authored with his wife Phyllis, who often assisted him with research for his historical works. The Klugers have lived near San Francisco since 2003.
From the B&N Reads Blog
Page 1 of