Personal History

Watergate and the Pentagon Papers from inside the Washington Post, told by the publisher who had to decide whether to print and risk the paper's survival. Graham's Pulitzer-winning memoir is unusually honest about her own fear and her growth into the role, and it shows press freedom as a series of hard, personal choices rather than an abstraction. The press lens here becomes a life: what it actually costs, and takes, to hold the powerful to account.

The publisher who inherited the Washington Post and grew into the spine of American press freedom at its highest-stakes moments. Personal History, her Pulitzer-winning memoir, tells of deciding to print the Pentagon Papers and to pursue Watergate with the paper's survival on the line. She wrote with unusual honesty about her own fear and growth. The press lens here becomes a life.