Katharine Graham: The Leadership Journey of an American Icon

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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 ...

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More About This Book

Overview

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.

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Editorial Reviews

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. (Oct. 24) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Soundview Executive Book Summaries
In 1963, Katherine Graham took over as publisher and CEO of The Washington Post while coping with a failed marriage and private jeers from doubtful male executives. Over the next 20 years, Graham would make the Post into one of the largest and most successful media corporations. In Katherine Graham, leadership expert Robin Gerber details Graham's extensive interpersonal skills, pragmatic determination, and courageous management style. Through both public and personal stories, Gerber reveals numerous lessons in leadership that can be gleaned from Graham's incomparable career. Copyright © 2006 Soundview Executive Book Summaries
Kirkus Reviews
An analysis of key factors and events in Graham's remarkable transition from acquiescent wife and mother to stalwart CEO of the Washington Post. It's easy enough in retrospect to say a person was a born leader, as Gerber (Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way, 2002) does of Katharine Graham (1917-2001). But there's a twist in the story of the late principal owner and publisher of the Post: She may indeed have been born to wealth and position, but after 23 years of fulfilling the ultimate '40s debutante role of social paragon and consort to her sometimes abusive husband, Philip, who preceded her as head of the newspaper her father had bought and rejuvenated, she had to be, as the author asserts, born again. In 1963, Philip Graham, having sunk deeper into what was suspected to be bipolar disorder complicated by alcoholism, committed suicide. It was at this point, Gerber stresses, that Graham's true character emerged and, instead of selling the newspaper as even her closest friends and associates urged, she made the decision to take on her husband's role and build a profitable media business fully consistent with her father's inculcated vision of journalism adhering to the highest standards of public service. Much of the story will be reiterative to readers of Graham's 1997 autobiography-the initial sniping by male associates and media critics, the tension of remolding the staff by bringing in outsider Ben Bradlee as managing editor, the high drama of knowingly defying Presidents Johnson and Nixon, respectively, in publishing the Pentagon Papers (after a prohibitive court injunction had been issued) and then doggedly pursuing Watergate. Gerber's rendition, however, provides additionalinsights into the evolution of Graham's management methodology, particularly regarding key consultations that preceded tough decisions she inevitably made on her own. Calculatingly inspirational while avoiding treacle.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781591841043
  • Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
  • Publication date: 10/20/2005
  • Pages: 272
  • Product dimensions: 6.26 (w) x 9.28 (h) x 1.09 (d)

Meet the Author

Robin Gerber, the author of Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way, is an international speaker on leadership, a national commentator, and an opinion writer for USA Today and other major newspapers. She is a senior fellow in executive education at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

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