Easton Press: WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST: NEWSPAPER EDITOR: CASTLE in CALIFORNIA

Description: Easton Press leather edition of W.A. Swanberg's "Citizen Hearst: A Biography of William Randolph Hearst," a COLLECTOR'S edition, one of the the LIBRARY OF AMERICAN HISTORY series, published in 1988. Bound in hunter green leather, the book has decorative paper end leaves, satin book marker, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition—except for a 'blank' attached bookplate on inside fly leaf. COLLECTOR'S NOTES is included. William Randolph Hearst, who lived from 1863--1951, was the son of George Hearst and Phoebe Apperson Hearst, a former school teacher. During his lifetime, WR Hearst got nearly everything he wanted. Son of a rich man and an only child, he was lavishly doted on by a genteel mother who was obsessed with "culture." Hearst spent on average a $1,000,000 yearly acquiring rococo antiques and works of art. His ultimate trademark was SAN SIMEON, his $30,000,000 castle in California. Hearst attended HARVARD where he worked on the newspaper and increased revenue greatly. Hearst married Millicent Wilson in 1903 in Grace Church at Broadway and Tenth, the day before his fortieth birthday. They became the parents of five sons. Although Hearst never went to church, he regarded himself as an Episcopalian. By 1923, Hearst owned 22 daily papers, 15 Sunday papers and nine magazines. His PR people claimed that one out of four American families read a Hearst publication. However, Hearst always spent more than he earned and by 1939, he was teetering on bankruptcy, forced to borrow a million dollars from his mistress, actress MARION DAVIES, in order to save his "Organization." Miss Davies was thirty-five years his junior and a girl in Flo Ziegfeld's chorus line when Hearst first met her in 1917. Hearst was eccentric yet practical, sadistic but kindly, megalomaniacal, public spirited, hard driving, vacillating, tolerant and vemonous---a walking dichotomy who was simply unexplainable. Hearst tried to enter politics, and ran for governor of New York. His failure to achieve the Presidency was a blow from which he never quite recovered. Hearst "courted" politicians, including Franklin Roosevelt who invited Hearst to the White House, but Hearst turned against FDR. Theodore Roosevelt sent his Secretary of State to campaign against Hearst, saying that Hearst was a demagogue, a wily capitalist posing as a friend of labor, a tax-evader, an unscrupulous newspaper publisher who incited hatred. Swanberg said Hearst had "Jekyll and Hyde" tendencies. Certainly his 'yellow journalism' was what he built his empire on. With immigration, migration, and industrialization happening all at once, the country was in serious need of a not so serious diversion. Hearst tailored his papers to his audience, dropping the price of his New York paper to .1 cent in a war with JOSEPH PULITZER and his competing newspaper. At his death, Hearst may have been a defeated man, but he was by no means a poor one. In addition to a $59,000,000 personal estate, he left a publishing organization with assets of some $160,000,000. Hearst's will filled 125 typewritten pages with his five sons the trustees of all three trusts. There was no bequest for Miss Davies in his will--although he had already given her 30,000 shares of Hearst Corporation stock but the stock was to revert to the sons upon her death. Hearst also 'declared' that the only children "I ever had are my sons in this will named." Now that her husband was dead, Mrs. Hearst, could resume in sorrow the position that been hers in name only for decades. The Hearst Press declared that he was "the greatest figure in American Journalism." 555 page, including an index. I offer combined shipping.

Price: 34.95 USD

Location: Walnut Ridge, Arkansas

End Time: 2025-01-10T03:45:29.000Z

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