The colorful, charismatic Roy Howard, publisher and journalist, was in his twenties when he built the United Press. In his thirties, he was named chairman of the Scripps-Howard newspaper empire, where he established and edited the company’s flagship paper, The New York World Telegram. Traveling 2.5 million miles in search of news, he scored one-on-one interviews with Stalin and Hitler during the same week in 1936; consulted the Duke of Windsor about his public image; consoled the grieving Charles Lindberg; and counseled every U.S. president from Woodrow Wilson to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Two weeks before the atomic bomb was dropped, General Douglas MacArthur trusted him with the classified information that the face of warfare was about to change forever. At the peak of his career, Howard, who had worked as a newsboy to help support his family, was named one of “59 Men Who ‘Rule’ America” by The New York Times (John D. Rockefeller was first.) Newsmaker is based on Patricia Beard’s exclusive access to fifty years of Howard’s personal diaries, and thousands of pages of his “Strictly Confidential” memoranda, which divulge the backstories of the most significant events and personalities of his turbulent times.
Newsmaker was praised by the President and Dean of the Newseum in Washington, D.C.; the Dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University; and the Washington enterprise editor of USA Today.
Kirkus Reviews—”A lively history of one man’s indelible imprint on American news.”