Description
A portrait of Katharine Graham describes her childhood, takeover of "The Washington Post" after her husband's suicide, and controversial leadership decisions during her publication of the Pentagon Papers and coverage of Watergate.
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In this absorbing and thoughtful study, Robin Gerber reveals the leadership style that was the heart of Katharine Graham's success. Drawing upon exclusive interviews with her friends and colleagues, Gerber analyzes the principles that guided Graham's toughest decisions.When Katharine Graham took over as publisher and CEO of The Washington Post in 1963, she was burdened with a provincial paper, the painful aftermath of a failed marriage, and private jeering from male executives who believed that she wasn't up to the job.But in the twenty years following, she remade the Post into one of the world's largest and most successful media corporations. With her amazing ability to convert every challenge into a mark of achievement for the paper, Graham steered the Post through trials that shook the foundations of not only journalism but the nation as well. As publisher, she defied the government by publishing the Pentagon Papers and exposed White House corruption through a dogged investigation of the Watergate scandal. As CEO, she took The Washington Post Company from $84 million in revenue in 1963 to $1.4 billion when she stepped down in 1991.Throughout her career, Katharine Graham cultivated a management style defined principally by humility and courage. Even her harshest critics acknowledged her interpersonal skills; when faced with sexism in the workplace, she avoided stridency in favor of a pragmatic determination to achieve her goals. While her most canny judgments seemed to be delivered in utter confidence, in private she agonized over each decision, whether it involved forcefully restructuring the paper's management or resolving a bitter and violent labor strike.In this deeply researched study of leadership and in the lucid understanding that Gerber brings to it, we find a full and nuanced measure of one woman's incomparable career. In teaching us how to achieve personal triumph in the face of great obstacles, Robin Gerber's Katharine Graham is an inspiration to all men and women seeking positions of leadership.
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