The Washington Post; The First 100 Years

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. xiii, [3], 495 [1] pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index., Small distribution insert laid in. Rear DJ flat creased. DJ has some wear, soiling, and edge tears. Chalmers M. Roberts was a chief diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post who covered the cold war, the nuclear arms race and the seats of power in Washington in the 1950's and 60's. Mr. Roberts joined The Post in 1949 and took on the diplomatic beat in 1953. Besides global affairs, he covered a range of general assignments, writing about the Supreme Court, Congress, the White House and political campaigns. Before retiring in 1971, Mr. Roberts wrote many of The Post's principal articles on the Pentagon Papers, the official secret history of the Vietnam War. After The Post obtained the documents and the Nixon Administration won an injunction against The Times to block publication on national security grounds, he urged continued publication by The Post and wrote one more article before The Post -- and Mr. Roberts -- were named as defendants in the injunction. His last day at work was June 30, when the Supreme Court struck down the administration's effort to restrain publication. He was the author of five books: a 1973 memoir, "First Rough Draft: A Journalist's Journal of Our Times"; "Washington Past and Present" (1950); "The Nuclear Years: The Arms Race and Arms Control 1945-70" (1970); "The Washington Post: The First 100 Years" (1977); and "How Did I Get Here So Fast? Rhetorical Questions and Available Answers From a Long and Happy Life" (1991). The Washington Post (sometimes abbreviated to WaPo) is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area. Daily broadsheet editions are printed for the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. The newspaper has won 69 Pulitzer Prizes. This includes six separate Pulitzers awarded in 2008, second only to The New York Times's seven awards in 2002 for the highest number ever awarded to a single newspaper in one year. Post journalists have also received 18 Nieman Fellowships and 368 White House News Photographers Association awards. In the early 1970s, in the best-known episode in the newspaper's history, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the American press's investigation into what became known as the Watergate scandal. Their reporting in The Washington Post greatly contributed to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. In years since, the Post's investigations have led to increased review of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The newspaper was founded in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins (1838-1912), and in 1880 it added a Sunday edition, becoming the city's first newspaper to publish seven days a week. In 1889, Hutchins sold the newspaper to Frank Hatton, a former Postmaster General, and Beriah Wilkins, a former Democratic congressman from Ohio. To promote the newspaper, the new owners requested the leader of the United States Marine Band, John Philip Sousa, to compose a march for the newspaper's essay contest awards ceremony. Sousa composed "The Washington Post". It became the standard music to accompany the two-step, a late 19th-century dance craze, and remains one of Sousa's best-known works. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the Post printed Clifford K. Berryman's classic illustration Remember the Maine, which became the battle-cry for American sailors during the War. In 1902, Berryman published another famous cartoon in the Post - Drawing the Line in Mississippi. This cartoon depicts President Theodore Roosevelt showing compassion for a small bear cub and inspired New York store owner Morris Michtom to create the teddy bear. On June 1, 1933, Meyer bought the paper at a bankruptcy auction for $825,000 three weeks after stepping down as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He had bid anonymously. The Post's health and reputation were restored under Meyer's ownership. In 1946, he was succeeded as publisher by his son-in-law, Philip Graham. Meyer eventually gained the last laugh over Hearst, who had owned the old Washington Times and the Herald before their 1939 merger that formed the Times-Herald. This was in turn bought by and merged into the Post in 1954. The combined paper was officially named The Washington Post and Times-Herald until 1973, although the Times-Herald portion of the nameplate became less and less prominent over time. After Phil Graham's death in 1963, control of The Washington Post Company passed to his wife Katharine Graham (1917-2001), who was also Eugene Meyer's daughter. Few women had run prominent national newspapers in the United States. Katharine Graham described her own anxiety and lack of confidence based on her gender in her autobiography. She served as publisher from 1969 to 1979 and headed The Washington Post Company into the early 1990s as chairman of the board and CEO. Her tenure is credited with seeing the newspaper rise in national stature through effective investigative reporting after it began to live down its reputation as a house organ for the Kennedy and Johnson administration, working to ensure that The New York Times did not surpass its Washington reporting of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandal. Executive editor Ben Bradlee put the newspaper's reputation and resources behind reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who, in a long series of articles, chipped away at the story behind the 1972 burglary of Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington. The Post's dogged coverage of the story, the outcome of which ultimately played a major role in the resignation of President Richard Nixon, won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.