Katharine Graham
The Leadership Journey of an American Icon
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- $4.99
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Publisher Description
For more than twenty years Katharine Graham was a self-described “doormat wife.” But after her husband’s suicide, she took over as publisher and CEO of The Washington Post and shocked the male executives who bet against her success. She defied the government by publishing the Pentagon Papers, took on the president in the Watergate investigation, and stood down a violent labor strike. Through every challenge she stuck by her values, building a diverse, profitable, and much-admired company.
Graham’s bestselling memoir Personal History gave readers this great woman’s intimate view of her own story. Now, Robin Gerber focuses on the heart of Graham’s success: her leadership. Gerber shows how Graham overcame an emotionally impoverished childhood, deep insecurities, and a marriage to a brilliant but mentally ill husband.
Drawing on exclusive interviews with some of her closest friends and colleagues, such as Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Margaret Carlson, and Gloria Steinem, Gerber analyzes the principles that guided Graham’s toughest decisions.
Perceptive and thought provoking, Katharine Graham provides a wealth of lessons for anyone moving up the leadership ladder. It’s also a deeply inspiring and hopeful book, offering women who continue to face sexism in the workplace a model for personal triumph.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The facts of Graham's life (1917 2001) how she took over the Washington Post in 1963 after her husband committed suicide, then guided the paper through the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the unfolding of the Watergate scandal and a potentially crippling printers' strike were laid out extensively in her Pulitzer-winning memoir, Personal History (1997). Gerber's significantly slimmer biography is less interested in retelling the story than in interpreting it. Drawing upon leadership theories popularized by James MacGregor Burns and other scholars, Gerber presents Graham's career as a model for female corporate success. Yet despite recognizing the "ambition and drive for excellence" Graham inherited from her parents, the profile largely dwells on the negative qualities she needed to overcome. A domineering mother and an abusive marriage had both chipped away at her self-esteem before she took over the paper, and a slowness to empathize with other women hampered her response to feminist calls for reforms in the newspaper industry. Gerber suggests that the traumatic upheavals that inadvertently placed Graham at the helm also unlocked the leadership potential she'd possessed all along. The theory rings true, but in comparison to Graham's own account of the transformation, this volume feels more like a study guide than a biography.
