cissy became notorious. she tried her hand at acting. and gave that up for writing novels and wrote two successful novels. one of them about american girl who married a russian princess -- prince. she gave up writing novels because she wanted to be in the newspaper business. her family had not given her much of a chance to do that but her brother, joe patterson who founded the new york daily news and her cousin burt mccormick had come to the floor of the chicago tribune. i don't imagine i could tell chicagoans anything they haven't heard about colonel mccormick but joe patterson may be less familiar figure to you. although he seemed to be the heir to a large newspaper fortune it was at the turn of the century and an avowed surge last -- socialist though still an avid polo player. he had been estranged from his family but came back to the tribune fold. when he and his cousin ran the caribbean -- trivia and they made -- i want to read about their collaboration. in 1909 i was accustomed to the chicago athletic club and taking the plunge in

at the same time cissy was undergoing personal struggles. her daughter who had been kidnapped as a child had become estranged from her and at the same time cissy was under attack all over the country particularly on the floor of the congress where the various congressmen and senators she felt could attack her with impunity because you can't be sued for libel or slander on the floor of the congress. so at the same time cissy's former son-in-law, her daughters ex-husband was a famous political columnist called drew pearson who had supported roosevelt through the war and fell out with but he and his new wife basically formed the only family that she managed to hold onto and so she was very much alone at that point and seemed to have begun to drink more according to reports that her friends made or gave, and the paper reflected the sand at the same time cissy seems to have fallen in with a very colorful and peculiar character in washington during the war a white russian immigrant doctor. it seems his credentials were not quite right to practice

in a gesture that cissy patterson sa as gallant and irritating to her brother and cousin, offered cissy patterson the chance to start writing for him. then he gave her the chance to edit his "washington herald" which was running fifth in the washington market in the 1920s. cissy patterson had a number of boyfriend after her second marriage several of whom were legendary newspaper men. walter howie was a colorful character who is the model for the main character in the play the front page. and others. one of them a lieutenant famous for creating huge circulation. with the help of her brother and cousin and william randolph hearst and arthur brisbane who is credited or faulted with creating yellow journalism, she took the washington herald in august of 1930. during her tenure -- when she first arrived in the city room it was filled with old curmudgeons who were skeptical to say the least about the arrival of a woman at the helm. i think william randolph hearst's attitude is maybe it will work. if nothing else a publicity stunt to have a woman at a major metropolitan newspaper. it was some

to her because all roads lead to cissy.and on the other side of that was two of my mother's sisters had worked for cissy. and so i had always heard about this lady publisher in d.c., and i'd always had the impression that she was sort of a zany socialite who got a newspaper and, but when i started digging deeper i looked up the circulation system six and one thing that people don't tend to mention is that the "times-herald," and before that, the herald, have by far the widest readership of any paper in d.c. it struck me that was a real interesting thing that whatever else you said about her, the paper, both papers were doing very badly before, fourth and fifth, in a six paper market. she made them by far the leading paper. and that struck me as interesting. and then if you look at the history of the ownership of those papers, i mean, some of the most important, some of the most successful american publishers of the 20th century had owned those papers at one point, william randolph hearst for example, had it before cissy. af

horrible, crazy and her life ) account and made cissy by saying bad boys have such an appeal? anyway, it was a big seller for her. .. >> about the history of of a whale. why this come of why now especially when one of your primary conclusions is for a while things will much change much. >> a couple of reasons which rents will not change but a lot has changed in the world with the soviet union collapsed in the only country that gets two chapters. write-up until what happened this year with the era of spring with the big impact on energy and also this is more ambitious because it tries to cover the whole energy spectrum there is a big topic to take on to find iu word biting off more than expected. >> after reading 700 + pages and the footnotes, they gil. [laughter] it makes the book shorter. >> very perceptive. >> it is hard to see how they fit together. because if we continue through unconventional sources which is great the expanded than what well prompt us we don't get much more bang for our buck how to recede these fitting together eventually? the story is how did they get s