The Colonel, the Life and Legend of Robert R McCormick, Indomitable Editor of the Chicago Tribune

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The Colonel, The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, Indomitable Editor of the Chicago Tribune. By Richard Norton Smith. (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. Pp. xxiv, 580. $55.00 cloth)

In these times of Bill Gates, the billionaire with the bad haircut, it is difficult for most of us to relate to the image of the diamond-studded millionaire so pervasive in American popular culture in the first part of the twentieth century. Did such gilded men truly exist outside of the popular media, the ones who rode about in limousines, wore tuxedos and spats, built ostentatious mansions, gave champagne parties, and who met with presidents as equals while also being …