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MONICA READS, By Monica Drahonovsky
Personal History – Katharine Graham
By Katharine Graham
People of the READ! Yes, I am talking to you. This book is fascinating, historical, absorbing, and the most interesting read of this year. You will be riveted and intrigued. You will LOVE this book. My newest bucket list entry is to have lunch with Katharine Graham.
Ms. Graham starts this Pulitzer Prize winner from the beginning and introduces us to her mother and father and siblings. All of them are complicated, some might say self-absorbed and very wealthy in a time that stretches through the depression to today. You will learn how the wealthy lived and thought. WOW. She also explains her difficulties and how she has coped with them. If you think the wealthy are without strife and pain, think again. Katharine Meyer Graham had an uncommon life and one that she shares so easily and brilliantly. You will be so glad you had the pleasure of meeting “Kay.”
Kay searches like everyone else for the reason she was born. Kay shares her complexity of thought about her family, her education and her inability to even know how to wash a sweater and dry it. She admits she still doesn’t know how to do the most mundane household chores. The newspaper had been her father’s dream and work. After their marriage, her husband Phil Graham took over from her father and she and Phil shared the ownership of the newspaper while she was at home with the children. She was transformed from being a young, wealthy married woman with four children, (three boys and a girl) to Chief Operating Officer of the much talked about and read Washington Post newspaper after her husband died.
The life she develops at home and the newspaper she works in become central to who this self-conscious woman becomes. I have been mesmerized by her clarity of self, her hopes for herself and family and the way she navigates the world’s rich, famous politicians and high-powered business men and women. She is at times meek and mild and grows into a witty, forceful and above all else – an eloquent writer. We all should go to lunch with her. Katharine Meyer Graham is my new heroine.
Go the library at once and put your name on the waiting list for this spectacular read. You could also go to a book store and buy your own copy. Just do it.
Monica Drahonovsky reviews books for InDepthNH.org. Monica is known for her love of history and her lifelong love for reading. She has a bachelor’s degree in History, with a minor in English. “My years of reading for leisure and pleasure have given me the insight to read a book and analyze the author’s baggage, cargo and ability to write the language of his/her mind and utilize the gift of prose to educate and entertain the reader. Go get a book, read it and enjoy the adventure.” Contact Monica at mawest@tds.net