William Randolph Hearst was a man of mythical proportions and staggering contradictions. And he was a fascinating character, so much so that he appears in various fictional works, from John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Last Tycoon" to Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," as if his life was not sufficiently bizarre in its own right. At its peak, Hearst's media empire included 28 leading newspapers from the San Francisco Examiner to the New York Journal, 18 magazines including Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar, and eight radio stations, an enterprise worth more than $220 million and reaching more than 30 million people -- just a tad less than 25 percent of the American population! No wonder Hearst managed to get people such as Winston Churchill, even Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler, to pen articles for his papers. He lived a life of royalty from his 165-room La Cuesta Encantada in San Simeon on the Pacific Coast to St. Donat's castle in the Welsh countryside--guest George Bernard Shaw quipped, ""This is what God would have built if he had had the money." Author Daniel Alef brings to life the remarkable story of a man who was at once a prodigy, a titan, a novelty and a contradiction. Includes a timeline, short bibliography and extensive internet video links about Hearst [3,233-word Titans of Fortune biographical profile]
advertisement