Katharine Graham

Katharine Graham (1917–2001) was an American newspaper publisher and memoirist. The daughter of Washington Post owner Eugene Meyer, she worked briefly in journalism before joining the family newspaper. After her husband, Philip Graham, died in 1963, she assumed leadership of the Washington Post Company, later serving as publisher of the newspaper and as the company’s chief executive.

Her writing is rooted in autobiography, journalism and institutional history. Personal History follows her sheltered upbringing, marriage and unexpected entry into corporate leadership. Graham writes candidly about insecurity, grief and the restrictions placed on women of her generation, while showing how experience gradually altered her understanding of authority and responsibility.

The memoir’s public history is equally important. Graham recounts the Post’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971, its Watergate reporting and the bruising pressmen’s strike of 1975. Published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1997, Personal History received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

New readers should begin with Personal History, the book listed on WebToTell. It is both Graham’s central literary achievement and an unusually close account of decisions that shaped modern American journalism. Her perspective as publisher gives the familiar stories of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate a different focus: the risks borne by the institution, and the person required to make the final call.