The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst

Amazon.com
The epic scope of historian David Nasaw's biography matches the titanic personality and achievements of William Randolph Hearst (1862-1951), who built "the nation's first media conglomerate" from a single San Francisco newspaper. Based on previously unavailable sources, including Hearst's personal papers, Nasaw's long but absorbing narrative gives a full-bodied account of the often contradictory mogul: "a huge man with a tiny voice; a shy man who was most comfortable in crowds ... an autocratic boss who could not fire people; a devoted husband who lived with his mistress." Wife Millicent Hearst and actress-inamorata Marion Davies also emerge with more complexity than in previous portraits like Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, whose factual inaccuracies Nasaw dissects. The author tempers the usual simplistic account of Hearst's political evolution from fire-breathing leftist to red-baiting conservative, calling him "a classic liberal" who believed in less-is-more government and deplored fascism as much as communism. Fresh insights and elegantly turned phrases abound in Nasaw's depiction of Hearst's activities as newspaper publisher, movie producer, and politician, but what's even more intriguing is the poignant personal drama of a man born "in the city of great expectations on the edge of the continent" who was buried 89 years later in San Francisco, "the place he used to know." --Wendy Smith


From Publishers Weekly
It has been 40 years since the last major Hearst biographyAthus this new volume has inherent value in portraying anew the great forerunner of Rupert Murdoch and other modern-day media moguls. This long-winded tome, however, often bogs down in trivial details of Hearst's tangled personal and professional life. Nasaw (Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements) is the first to have had access to the formerly closed Hearst archives, but he doesn't really offer any surprises. On the big questions, the author only confirms what we already knew: that it was a lack of academic diligence that lay behind Hearst's failure at Harvard; that, like countless other well-heeled young men of his generation, he kept a mistress before marriage; that he was na?ve in his dealings with Hitler. Neither is it a revelation that Hearst's financial collapse in the late 1930s was the result of spendthrift habits combined with the dour economic climate of the times. But the Hearst whom Nasaw portrays in such extraordinary (and excessive) detail is still the fascinating figure we've known for years: the self-absorbed genius equally addicted to power and possessions, the press baron interested not just in reporting news but in making and manipulating it. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC alternate selection. (June) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The outsized life of William Randolph Hearst is a challenge to any biographer. The son of a miner who made a fortune in Western gold fields, he transformed American journalism as a publisher. He was a force in Hollywood's first golden age, and Marion Davies, his longtime mistress, was an early star. In politics, he served in Congress and sought the presidency, an office Franklin Roosevelt attained with the help of Hearst, who then became an arch-critic while corresponding with world leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler. As a collector, he filled warehouses with art objects he could not fit into the castles he built and bought. It may be inevitable that no biography could do full justice to each aspect of such a life, but CUNY historian Nasaw (Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements) has done an admirable job. Enjoying the cooperation of family members and access to new primary sources, Nasaw has written a richer biography than the previous standard, W.A. Swanberg's Citizen Hearst (LJ 10/15/93), and a comparable book to Ben Proctor's two-volume work-in-progress, of which William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years (LJ 4/1/98) is Volume 1. Highly recommended for general collections.-DRobert F. Nardini, Chichester, NH Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Harold Evans
David Nasaw's absorbing and ingeniously organized new biography might finally rescue Hearst from the curse of Kane.... [Nasaw] is a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst.


From Kirkus Reviews
A comprehensive biography of the man who built the nation's first great media empire and saw its potential for shaping political discourse, influencing elections, and setting the national agenda.Nasaw (Going Out, 1993, etc.) was allowed access to previously unavailable personal and business papers by Hearst family members and the Hearst Corporation in the course of his research. He has compiled an exhaustive portrait of the larger-than-life Hearst from his nomadic childhood--he was the son of a self-made millionaire miner and a doting, peripatetic mother--to his final illness at the home of his mistress Marion Davies. A social success but an academic failure at Harvard, Hearst was 24 when he was given control of the San Francisco Examiner by his father in 1887. Nasaw recounts how Hearst built his newspaper empire and how he used his position as editor and publisher to influence American politics in the early decades of the 20th century. Occupying center stage are Hearst's political ambitions: his battles against trusts, political corruption, internationalism, and Communism; his relations with the Democratic Party and with presidents and would-be presidents (as well as with Churchill, Mussolini, and Hitler). But Nasaw also focuses on the energetic Hearst as an art collector, a film producer, a family man, a lover of women, and a big spender. With his empire built on borrowed money--at first from his mother (his father had left her everything) and later from banks--Hearst, the great builder and accumulator, eventually found himself in severe financial difficulties and was forced into virtual bankruptcy. Nasaw's story is a big one, full of American and world history, characters famous and infamous, entertaining trivia that may or may not be revealing, and (unfortunately) a good measure of tedious detail. A full-length portrait that effectively corrects the Citizen Kane caricature. (50 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


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This bio debunks some long-standing myths about America's first media typhoon. — Suzanne Ruta


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