Book Review

In his preface to one of the first book-length biographies of William Randolph Hearst, Charles A. Beard predicted confidently that the newspaper tycoon, then sixty-three, was in imminent danger of disappearing under the weight of popular disapproval. Only the most degraded American readers of Ferdinand Lundberg's Imperial Hearst (1936), Beard suggested, could reach "any other verdict than that of . . . ostracism by decency in life, and oblivion in death." In an ironic twist of history, Lundberg's scathing biography—together with Beard's introduction—would find its way to the screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz and ultimately onto the silver screen. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles's masterly projection of Lundberg's protagonist as Citizen Kane might have painted Hearst as odious and indecent, but, far from consigning him to oblivion, it only confirmed his status as one of the enduring cultural icons of twentieth-century America.

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One might expect Hearst's most recent biographer, David Nasaw, who has published important works on American social and cultural history, to explore Hearst's iconic status within the histories of journalism, entertainment, and consumption. Instead, Nasaw has produced a traditional—and quite impressive—life history. In meticulous fashion, with previously unexamined sources, and at appropriately prodigious length, Nasaw's The Chief reconstructs the life of one of the most famous and wealthy men of the twentieth century.

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