The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century

As the founder of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, Henry Luce changed the way we consume the news and understand the world around us. Now acclaimed historian Alan Brinkley gives us a riveting portrait of this brilliant, complicated man who built one of the greatest media empires of the twentieth century.
The son of missionaries, Luce craved both power and virtue from a young age. After he helped launch Time in 1923, he was catapulted into a world of fame, fortune, and influence, and even more so in 1936 after the spectacular beginning of Life, which would become the most popular magazine of its time. Brinkley examines Luce's prescient belief that members of the increasingly busy middle class needed a fast, reliable way to understand a world that was changing with almost unfathomable speed. He shows us how Luce reinvented the magazine industry and--along with radio and the movies--helped create the modern era as we know it. In addition, Brinkley illuminates Luce's personal life: his childhood in rural China; his years at Hotchkiss and Yale, where he met Brit Hadden, with whom he would conceive and publish Time; his tempestuous marriage to Clare Boothe Luce; and his isolated and obsessive final years.
The Publisher is a great American story about the astonishing achievements and costs--both public and private--of one man's soaring ambitions.