Saturday, May 22, 2010

Five best books on American moguls

T.J. Stiles is the author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, winner of the 2009 National Book Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize.

For the Wall Street Journal he named a five best list of books on American moguls. One title on the list:
Pulitzer
by James McGrath Morris
Harper, 2010

Today's reporters and media tycoons would do well to study James McGrath Morris's life of Joseph Pulitzer, the journalist, editor and entrepreneur. A proverbial penniless immigrant (a German-speaking Hungarian Jew), Pulitzer fought for the Union in the Civil War, then moved to St. Louis. There he learned English and the news business. His rapid rise in journalism was interwoven with politics, a natural twist, since newspapers were overtly partisan. He briefly held elected office but found greatness as a newspaper owner. Morris is fascinating on Pulitzer as a working (make that hard-working) reporter and editor who understood how to grab his readers—and saw where his industry was going (or could go).
Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power.

--Marshal Zeringue