MixedThe Austin ChronicleAs someone intimately connected with a powerful newspaper in the nation\'s capital, Graham has written a book possessed of a vast sweep and a cast that reads like a series of program listings for Biography ... Graham provides an insider\'s view of American history from the Great Depression to the Great Society, as well as a snapshot view of life pre-feminist movement. Much of what she describes sheds an occasionally disturbing light on the awkward relationship among politics, economics, and the media ... Personal History is marked by an uncommon grace as well as honesty. Katharine Graham describes with compassion and calm the insanity that swallowed her life and took her husband\'s ... I feel that it is almost too personal to be history; that is, while no one with any sense expects a memoir to be heavily weighted with objectivity, Graham exhibits a dismaying penchant for self-justification and self-explanation that is ultimately negative ... What Graham provides us with, mostly artlessly, is a living, written photograph of what a woman\'s life was like before 1970 -- how women thought, what they believed -- and in some respects how it still is.
