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MARY MCGRORY

Name: MARY MCGRORY
Author: John Norris
ISBN: 978-0-525-42971-5

THE FIRST QUEEN OF JOURNALISM

by John Norris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 22, 2015

Norris is plainly in love with his fascinating subject, which is not only McGrory, but newspaper journalism in general.

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Mary McGrory’s life (1918-2004) as a Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington columnist is so interesting that it’s hard to understand why there hasn’t been a book about her until now. Enter Norris (The Disaster Gypsies: Humanitarian Workers in the World's Deadliest Conflicts, 2007, etc.) with this balanced, page-turning biography.

Despite the subtitle, it seems McGrory might have been the last queen as well: in her regal bearing and imperious manner, her influence on politicians and journalists, and her manner of getting others to do her bidding. Early on, it seems a little off-putting that so much is made of her romantic life (or public lack thereof), her attractiveness, and her gender in general. Ultimately, however, being a woman who found her voice and came to power during the McCarthy era is crucial to her journalistic singularity. McGrory may well have been a feminist icon, but she wasn’t above playing the frail female when it worked to her advantage or employing her considerable charms in ways that might undermine journalistic objectivity. She dated the future President John F. Kennedy (once), was propositioned forthrightly by President Lyndon B. Johnson (once), and had a romantic relationship with candidate Eugene McCarthy, whose campaign manager was the true love of her life. She once said, “I would have loved to be a housewife, but it just never happened that way. I want to drop dead in the newsroom.” McGrory reported more aggressively than most columnists and injected more opinion into her pieces than most reporters, making her a curious fit on the news pages of the Washington Star, which she preferred to the op-ed section. When the Star folded, she moved to the Washington Post, where her influence increased but she was never as comfortable. She could be tough, even on her friends, but frequent target Ted Kennedy proclaimed her “poet laureate of American journalism,” and this nuanced portrait provides plenty of evidence.

Norris is plainly in love with his fascinating subject, which is not only McGrory, but newspaper journalism in general.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-525-42971-5

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: June 14, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)