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Author: E.J. Kahn, Jr.
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
Born into one of America’s wealthiest and most distinguished families, John (“Jock”) Hay Whitney (1904-1982) spent his childhood in an Italian Renaissance town house on New York’s Fifth Avenue, in Westbury, Long Island and Greentree, South Carolina. Groton, the prestigious prep school, transformed the pudgy, awkward, stuttering young boy with a penchant for day-dreaming into an accomplished young man with direction, who went on to study at Yale and Oxford. Jock pursued a life dedicated to leadership, to using his money responsibly and wisely, and to cultivating diverse interests. He brought patrician quality and flair to an incredible array of worlds: to café society as a redoubtable playboy; to sports as a polo player who appeared on the cover of Time and as a stable owner who raced horses on a prodigious scale; to family life as the husband of two of the era’s great beauties, the second being Betsey Cushing Roosevelt, FDR’s favorite daughter-in-law; to Hollywood as the producer, with David O. Selznick, of “Gone With the Wind,” “A Star is Born,” and “Rebecca”; to Broadway as the backer of “Life with Father” and “A Streetcar Named Desire”; to the arts as a collector and as president and trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; to World War II as a volunteer and as a German prisoner of war who made a dramatic escape from a moving train; to politics as an early supporter of Eisenhower and later as a close friend of the President; to diplomacy as ambassador to Great Britain from 1956 to 1961; to education as Yale’s Senior Fellow; to philanthropy as an innovator; to investing as founder, in 1946, of one of the earliest venture-capital firms; and to journalism as the publisher who battled valiantly to save the troubled New York Herald Tribune. “Mr. Kahn covers, apparently in full, the life of Mr. Whitney. It is by writing down the ascertainable that the picture of his personality — an intelligent, concerned man with a talent for bringing together those who are poles apart — emerges... Each sentence, with style and sophistication, pushes forward the narrative with an offering of new information, laced at times with witty comment. There are no unanswered questions... [A] wholly absorbing... story of an unusual life.” — Richard F. Shepard, New York Times “In relating Whitney’s always-interesting story and in setting it in the texture of the times, Kahn writes with awe. In fact, there are times when he is irreverent. That is all to the good, but his Whitney is a thoroughly credible person, a genuinely well-mannered and nice person, who has wanted to do well whatever he started out to accomplish. He’s a delight to meet.” — Alden Whitman, Boston Globe “Kahn’s New Yorker style, richly anecdotal and detailed... does justice to this highly likable millionaire sportsman, diplomat, newspaper publisher, stage and Hollywood angel and Maecenas, who played all these roles with zest and imagination... A delightful tribute to a man who ‘epitomized, in a world of increasing egalitarianism, the vanishing patrician.’” — Publishers Weekly
Author: E.J. Kahn, Jr.
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Get Book Here
Book Description
Born into one of America’s wealthiest and most distinguished families, John (“Jock”) Hay Whitney (1904-1982) spent his childhood in an Italian Renaissance town house on New York’s Fifth Avenue, in Westbury, Long Island and Greentree, South Carolina. Groton, the prestigious prep school, transformed the pudgy, awkward, stuttering young boy with a penchant for day-dreaming into an accomplished young man with direction, who went on to study at Yale and Oxford. Jock pursued a life dedicated to leadership, to using his money responsibly and wisely, and to cultivating diverse interests. He brought patrician quality and flair to an incredible array of worlds: to café society as a redoubtable playboy; to sports as a polo player who appeared on the cover of Time and as a stable owner who raced horses on a prodigious scale; to family life as the husband of two of the era’s great beauties, the second being Betsey Cushing Roosevelt, FDR’s favorite daughter-in-law; to Hollywood as the producer, with David O. Selznick, of “Gone With the Wind,” “A Star is Born,” and “Rebecca”; to Broadway as the backer of “Life with Father” and “A Streetcar Named Desire”; to the arts as a collector and as president and trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; to World War II as a volunteer and as a German prisoner of war who made a dramatic escape from a moving train; to politics as an early supporter of Eisenhower and later as a close friend of the President; to diplomacy as ambassador to Great Britain from 1956 to 1961; to education as Yale’s Senior Fellow; to philanthropy as an innovator; to investing as founder, in 1946, of one of the earliest venture-capital firms; and to journalism as the publisher who battled valiantly to save the troubled New York Herald Tribune. “Mr. Kahn covers, apparently in full, the life of Mr. Whitney. It is by writing down the ascertainable that the picture of his personality — an intelligent, concerned man with a talent for bringing together those who are poles apart — emerges... Each sentence, with style and sophistication, pushes forward the narrative with an offering of new information, laced at times with witty comment. There are no unanswered questions... [A] wholly absorbing... story of an unusual life.” — Richard F. Shepard, New York Times “In relating Whitney’s always-interesting story and in setting it in the texture of the times, Kahn writes with awe. In fact, there are times when he is irreverent. That is all to the good, but his Whitney is a thoroughly credible person, a genuinely well-mannered and nice person, who has wanted to do well whatever he started out to accomplish. He’s a delight to meet.” — Alden Whitman, Boston Globe “Kahn’s New Yorker style, richly anecdotal and detailed... does justice to this highly likable millionaire sportsman, diplomat, newspaper publisher, stage and Hollywood angel and Maecenas, who played all these roles with zest and imagination... A delightful tribute to a man who ‘epitomized, in a world of increasing egalitarianism, the vanishing patrician.’” — Publishers Weekly
Author: Richard Kluger
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
Few American newspapers, perhaps none, have matched the New York Herald Tribune in the crispness of its writing and editing, the bite of its commentators, the range of its coverage and the clarity of its typography. The “Trib”, as it was affectionately called, raised newspapering to an art form. It had an influence and importance out of all proportion to its circulation. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln went to great lengths to retain the support of its co-founder, Horace Greeley. President Eisenhower felt it was such an important institution and Republican organ that he helped broker its sale to its last owner, multimillionaire John Hay Whitney. The Trib’s spectacularly distinguished staffers and contributors included Karl Marx, Tom Wolfe, Walter Lippmann, Dorothy Thompson, Virgil Thomson, Eugenia Sheppard, Red Smith, Heywood Broun, Walter Kerr, Homer Bigart, and brothers Joseph and Stewart Alsop. At the close of World War II, the Herald Tribune, the marriage of two newspapers that had done more than any others to create modern daily journalism, was at its apex of power and prestige. Yet just twenty-one years later, its influence still palpable in every newsroom across the nation, the Trib was gone. This is the story The Paper, a 1986 finalist of the National Book Award for Nonfiction and winner of the George Polk Prize, tells. “Probably the best book ever written about an American newspaper. But it is more than that — a brilliant piece of social history that recounts in vivid and telling detail the changing conception of ‘news’ in America... The book is chockablock with marvelous yarns... And what a cast of characters Kluger has to work with... Some of the most vivid pages in The Paper are Kluger’s portraits of these arresting personalities.” — J. Anthony Lukas, The Boston Globe “Monumental... with a narrative sweep that is always absorbing and sometimes breathtaking... What invigorates this history is Mr. Kluger’s enthusiasm for his subject, which is apparent everywhere in the loving detail with which he tells the story... and in the liveliness of the prose with which he profiles some of the Tribune’s more unusual personalities.” — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times “Engrossing... if there is a better book about an American newspaper, I am unaware of it... It is loaded to the gunnels with newspaper anecdotes, but at its core The Paper is a book about the relationship between the press and the powerful, the press and the wealthy.” — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World “The romance of The Front Page, genteel anti-Semitism, the disaster of newspaper labor relations, and the rise and fall of newspaper fortunes. All are there in The Paper. It is irresistible.” — Anthony Lewis “Compelling... most delightfully so when Mr. Kluger is limning the words and deeds of the people who made The Paper crackle with vitality for more than a century... He does a remarkable job of bringing these people to life on the printed page.” — David Shaw, The New York Times Book Review “Remarkable... a fascinating account of a greatness that once was... This book will hold you in its narrative grip as you revel in a story of a grand venture and epic characters... Here the history of a newspaper is a graphic presentation of a nation’s life.” — Kirkus Reviews “Richard Kluger is uniquely qualified to tell this tale... He brings a novelist’s imagination to some vivid material.” — Paul Gray, Time Magazine “Fascinating from start to finish, the best book about American journalism since Swanberg’s Citizen Hearst. Huge and engrossing.” — Larry Lee, San Francisco Chronicle “A magnificently romantic history not only of the ill-fated New York Herald Tribune but of New York newspapering generally... peopled with unforgettable heroes and knaves.” — Robert Sherrill, Chicago Sun-Times
Author: Sandra Opdycke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190283742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
No One Was Turned Away is a book about the importance of public hospitals to New York City. At a time when less and less value seems to be placed on public institutions, argues author Sandra Opdycke, it is both useful and prudent to consider what this particular set of public institutions has meant to this particular city over the last hundred years, and to ponder what its loss might mean as well. Opdycke suggests that if these public hospitals close or convert to private management--as is currently being discussed--then a vital element of the civic life of New York City will be irretrievably lost. The story is told primarily through the history of Bellevue Hospital, the largest public hospital in the city and the oldest in the nation. Following Bellevue through the twentieth century, Opdycke meticulously charts the fluctuating fortunes of the city's public hospital system. Readers will learn how medical technology, urban politics, changing immigration patterns, economic booms and busts, labor unions, health insurance, Medicaid, and managed care have interacted to shape both the social and professional environments of New York's public hospitals. Having entered the twentieth century with high hopes for a grand expansion, Bellevue now faces financial and political pressures so acute that its very future is in doubt. In order to give context to the Bellevue experience, Opdycke also tracks the history of a private facility over the same century: New York Hospital. By noting the points at which the paths of these two mighty institutions have overlapped--as well as the ways in which they have diverged--this book clearly and persuasively highlights the significance of public hospitals to the city. No One Was Turned Away shows that private facilities like New York Hospital have generally provided superb care for their patients, but that in every era they have also excluded certain groups. This exclusion has occurred for various reasons, such as patients' diagnoses, their social characteristics, behavior, or financial status--or simply because of a lack of unoccupied beds. Fortunately, however, year in and year out, Bellevue and its fellow public facilities have acted as the city's medical safety net. Opdycke's book maintains that public hospitals will be as essential in the future as they have been in the past. This is a thoughtful and well-written study that will appeal to anyone interested in the history of medicine, public policy, urban affairs, or the City of New York.
Author: David Alan Richards
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681775816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 633
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Book Description
The mysterious, highly influential hidden world of Yale’s secret societies is revealed in a definitive and scholarly history. Secret societies have fundamentally shaped America’s cultural and political landscapes. In ways that are expected but never explicit, the bonds made through the most elite of secret societies have won members Pulitzer Prizes, governorships, and even presidencies. At the apex of these institutions stands Yale University and its rumored twenty-six secret societies. Tracing a history that has intrigued and enthralled for centuries, alluring the attention of such luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Skulls and Keys traces the history of Yale’s societies as they set the foundation for America’s future secret clubs and helped define the modern age of politics. But there is a progressive side to Yale’s secret societies that we rarely hear about, one that, in the cultural tumult of the nineteen-sixties, resulted in the election of people of color, women, and gay men, even in proportions beyond their percentages in the class. It’s a side that is often overlooked in favor of sensational legends of blood oaths and toe-curling conspiracies. Dave Richards, an alum of Yale, sheds some light on the lesser known stories of Yale’s secret societies. He takes us through the history from Phi Beta Kappa in the American Revolution (originally a social and drinking society) through Skull and Bones and its rivals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While there have been articles and books on some of those societies, there has never been a scholarly history of the system as a whole.
Author: Toby Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838715959
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
Substantially revised and updated, this book highlights how Hollywood has transformed itself to attain ever global clout and reach and the material factors underlining Hollywood's apparent artistic success. Takes into consideration recent events affecting Hollywood such as 9/11, US foreign policy and developments in consumer technology.
Author: Gerstle Mack
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 840
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Book Description
“Over the last four centuries there has accumulated a vast literature relating to scores of projects for linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the American tropics... Mr. Mack has undertaken, in the volume under review, to combine these numerous and varied sources into a history of all interoceanic canal projects in the Western Hemisphere from the discovery of America to the present day. The result is a work of unparalleled comprehensiveness in this field, based upon extensive research, and presented in a well-organized and exceptionally readable form... [of] superior merit.” — The American Historical Review “[This] book is important. It is the first definitive history of the Panama Canal, richly complete with colorful details of the explorations, conquests, intrigues, crackpot theories and engineering genius that went into the making of it... The Land Divided is an important book.” — The New York Times “A history of the Panama Canal which should provide for study and reference the definitive book on that project. From the 16th century explorers, the search for the ‘doubtful strait’, the first conception of an artificial canal in 1529, this outlines the adventures and aggressions in Spanish waters down to the 19th century and the French revival of the project of a canal. Meticulous tracing of the controversy, of local affairs in Panama, of political and international claims and disputes, of private interests vying with government interests, innumerable surveys, accelerated interest as the gold discoveries in California emphasized the need. Then de Lesseps, and the grandiose scheme and tragic failure, the bankruptcy of the Panama Canal Company and the ensuing scandals. The formation of a new international company, rivalry between Nicaragua and Panama, the U.S. purchase of the concession, the decision for the lock canal, and the amazing achievement with Gorgas and Goethals responsible. A history which is history, politics, finance, science, and which ignores no phase and no detail of the accomplishment that was to unite the world.” — Kirkus “[A]n exhaustive history of the Panama Canal... The author has achieved splendid success in his five years of careful research, compilation, and presentation of a full-length history of all the elements present in the creation of the canal... the author deserves recognition for his painstaking effort and ability in writing this scholarly volume.” — Proceedings of the US Naval Institute “The economic historian will find this book interesting and useful. It covers the whole history of the isthmian route — the search for a strait, the transit business, the abortive canal projects, the construction of the Panama Canal.” — The Journal of Economic History “Of prime interest to the historian and economist perhaps, this book should be a welcome addition to any serious geographical library. It is a systematic and well documented history of the Panama Canal and other isthmian canal projects... Mr. Mack has produced a most useful and readable account.” — The Geographical Journal “[A] book written with knowledge and insight.” — Geographical Review “[A] useful work of reference.” — Political Science Quarterly
Author: Eileen Whitfield
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813191799
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 488
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Book Description
A comprehensive biography of film's first star traces her rise to fame with the growth of the medium, her influence as a partner in United Artists, her relationship with Douglas Fairbanks, and her struggles later in life. UP.
Author: Wilbur C. Rich
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030015459
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
When President Barack Hussein Obama left office January 20, 2017, he left a fascinating legacy. The Obama Presidency will remain an intriguing part of our nation’s political history, and we can now say that there were unexpected achievements and failures. His tenure was both historical and complex, and will inevitably be compared with his predecessors and successors. The chapters in this volume are a serious assessment of President Obama’s tenure written by a diverse team that includes political scientists, sociologists, historians, and economists. They provide critical insights into the man and his policies and, more importantly, are written in a manner that makes them available to laypersons, journalists, students, and scholars.
Author: Daniel Okrent
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101666900
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 561
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Book Description
In this hugely appealing book, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, acclaimed author and journalist Daniel Okrent weaves together themes of money, politics, art, architecture, business, and society to tell the story of the majestic suite of buildings that came to dominate the heart of midtown Manhattan and with it, for a time, the heart of the world. At the center of Okrent's riveting story are four remarkable individuals: tycoon John D. Rockefeller, his ambitious son Nelson Rockefeller, real estate genius John R. Todd, and visionary skyscraper architect Raymond Hood. In the tradition of David McCullough's The Great Bridge, Ron Chernow's Titan, and Robert Caro's The Power Broker, Great Fortune is a stunning tribute to an American landmark that captures the heart and spirit of New York at its apotheosis.
Author: John W. Young
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 144115793X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
David Bruce (1898-1977) was a prominent American diplomat, who served in France, Germany, and the UK. His work is examined here to provide an in-depth look at the practice of diplomacy and the role of the ambassador as diplomatic actor. This thorough survey aims to investigate the relevance of the resident embassy to modern diplomacy. To do so, it focuses on the ambassador's daily work as a diplomat, looking at his role in promoting friendly relations, his political reporting, policy advising, as well as the role of his staff and his relations with others in the Foreign Service. It also addresses major issues such as the debate over the 'death of the embassy,' showing that ambassadors remain vital actors in the relations between major powers. The work integrates theoretical material on diplomatic practice and the case study of a highly regarded diplomat. This unique, readable study will appeal to students in diplomacy, international relations, American politics, as well as to trainee and junior diplomats.
