Is History Repeating Itself? Joseph Pulitzer and Media Concentration

Join me with my special guest author James McGrath Morris, author of Harper-Collins' new work "Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power." *Starred Review* Journalist and biographer Morris sums up the range of this biography in an author’s note: “In the nineteenth century, when America became an industrialized nation and Carnegie provided the steel, Rockefeller the oil, Morgan the money, and Vanderbilt the railroads, Joseph Pulitzer was the midwife to the birth of the modern mass media.” Such a scope could leave the reader reeling in references, but Morris deftly outlines the transformations of this era by focusing on Pulitzer’s own story. He avoids the trap of leaving the meaning for the man, as he interweaves social and political history with Pulitzer’s life. “A major biographical success . . . . A thrilling toboggan-ride tour of history. . . . Pulitzer presents a flood of diary entries, statistics, editorials, memoranda, and cables from its subject’s many ocean voyages. In this cavalcade of American life and letters, the pages fly by.” (The San Francisco Chronicle ) Join me for this great interview--it's loaded with surprises!