The Magnificent Medills

June 20, 2011
Ink, booze and eccentricity flow through a newspaper dynasty's veins in this lively, gossipy clan bio. Journalist McKinney chronicles four generations of Medills, including patriarch Joseph Medill, owner of the Chicago Tribune and confidant of Lincoln; his grandsons, legendary Trib publisher Col. Robert McCormick and New York Daily News founder Joseph Patterson, one an archconservative, the other a socialist who dressed like a hobo; and Patterson's daughter, Alicia, aviatrix, big-game hunter, and founder of Newsday. There's lots of rambunctious newspapering lore, from Patterson's invention of the sex-and-sleaze tabloid formula to bloody circulation wars in which rival Chicago papers hired gangsters to gun down each other's vendors. But McKinney is more taken with the family's glitzy, scandal-strewn private lives, offering succulent stories of alcoholism, suicides, extra-marital affairs, luxurious country houses, and glittering imperial balls. (The prize for melodrama goes to Patterson's sister Cissy, another headstrong debutante turned pioneering newspaperwoman: married to a handsome Polish count who borrowed money, beat her, and kidnapped their daughter, she finally got the czar himself to intervene.) Like her subjects, McKinney blends canny fact-finding, well-paced narrative and colorful detail into a compulsively readable confection. Photos.

July 1, 2011

In her debut, Chicago journalist McKinney, "an expert on historic Chicago families," offers an exhaustive account of four generations of madness, addiction, adultery and newspaper-publishing genius.

In 1855, Joseph Medill bought the Daily Tribune in a promising small town named Chicago. As Chicago boomed, so did the Tribune and Medill's career. He became a friend and confidant of Abraham Lincoln and literally named and shaped the Republican Party. His life of publishing, wealth and political influence would become the template for the next three generations of the family. While his own daughters were limited in their ambitions by the times and their gender, not so the next generations. Colonel Robert McCormick, Medill's grandson, made the Tribune the preeminent newspaper of the first half of the 20th century, with business acumen and a talent for hiring reporters and editors who could get the all-important scoop. His cousin Joe Patterson would do the same with the New York Daily News, Joe's sister Cissy with the Washington Herald, and Cissy's daughter Alicia with Long Island's Newsday. But the privilege that such publishing prowess brought did not inure the family from Kennedy-like flaws and tragedy. The Colonel's brother, who was mentally ill, took his own life, and alcoholism would spare few in the family. But privileged they were. All lived lives as American aristocrats, with multiple mansions, private railway cars, sojourns in Europe, and access to and acceptance among the most powerful families in America and the world. But if the family's lives consisted only of extravagance verging on decadence, their story would be of little interest. It is their brilliance in publishing newspapers when newspapers really mattered, combined with lives full of fault lines, that truly fascinates. McKinney skillfully delineates their story.

A solid account of the life and times of a family that was indeed magnificent.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011

With the engrossing sweep of a family saga and the rich details of a genealogical study, this book brings to life four generations of a family that shaped American journalism for over a century. Starting with Chicago Tribune founder Joseph Medill in 1855 and continuing with grandson Col. Robert R. McCormick's leadership of Chicago's newspaper of note, the family extended their influence by founding two other successful newspapers, New York's Daily News and Long Island's Newsday. By utilizing innovations like the tabloid format, comic strips, and pictorial layouts, they changed how the public consumes news. Journalist McKinney provides colorful snapshots of American history, showing how the family members and their journalistic endeavors interacted--and sometimes clashed--with important political leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. VERDICT For general readers of family dynasty-style nonfiction and anyone interested in American studies, newspaper history, and the glamour of the modern era from the 1850s to the 1950s. [See Prepub Alert, 4/18/11.]--Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2011
This portrait of a storied newspaper dynasty packs a powerful punch. From 1855 to the mid-twentieth century, the influence of the extended Medill-McCormick-Patterson family (the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, etc.) illustrated the power of the press and of one determined clan to shape the political landscape of the day. Populated by a colorful cast of family members, including Colonel Robert R. McCormick, Joseph Medill Patterson, and Cissy Patterson, the saga is not only a compulsively readable collective biography but also an overview of the rapid evolution of the American newspaper industry during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. As the death knell tolls for the era of the great city dailies, this timely look backward delivers the scoop on the zenith of print journalism.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)