The Magnificent Medills: America's Royal Family of Journalism During a Century of Turbulent Splendor
“[An] immensely entertaining book. . . . McKinney vividly re-creates the city’s no-holds-barred newspaper culture.” (Chicago Tribune)“Shifting smoothly from the life of one Medill, Patterson or McCormick to another, in the end she achieves a clear and comprehensive family biography, with all its complex interconnections.” (New York Times Book Review)“A solid account of this family.” (Washington Post)“Megan McKinney has written a knock-out dynastic history about the world of journalism. InThe Magnificent Medillswe learn how a single family forever changed Chicago and America. It’s impossible to understand today’s modern media world without reading this brilliant book. Highly recommended!” (Douglas Brinkley, author ofThe Quiet World)“Megan McKinney’s wonderfully researched, thoroughly engrossing,The Magnificent Medills, reveals Chicago’s McCormick-Patterson family in all its dazzling brilliance and delicious eccentricity.” (David Garrard Lowe, author ofLost Chicago)“Compulsively readable.  . . . With its backdrop of wealth and power, The Magnificent Medills reads almost like a rich historical novel. It just happens to be true.” (BookPage)“An intensely personal look at the Medill family. . . . Meticulously researched and detailed.” (Washington Independent Review of Books)“Chicago historian McKinney provides the first comprehensive chronicle of the Medill newspaper dynasty. . . . Deftly tell[ing] the tale of one of America’s first families of business.” (Philanthropy Magazine Review)“Ink, booze and eccentricity flow through a newspaper dynasty’s veins in this lively, gossipy clan bio. . . . Like her subjects, McKinney blends canny fact-finding, well-paced narrative and colorful detail into a compulsively readable confection.” (Publishers Weekly)“It is their brilliance in publishing newspapers when newspapers really mattered, combined with lives full of fault lines, that truly fascinates. . . . A solid account of the life and times of a family that was indeed magnficent.” (Kirkus Reviews)“This portrait of a storied newspaper dynasty packs a powerful punch.  . . . Not only a compulsively readable collective biography but also an overview of the rapid evolution of the American newspaper industry during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.” (Booklist)