Background
Smith, Richard Norton was born on October 2, 1953 in Leominster, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Frank Chandler and Ruth Adeline (Richards) Smith.
(For most of his varied and colorful career, Colonel Rober...)
For most of his varied and colorful career, Colonel Robert R. McCormick was the self-proclaimed emperor of "Chicagoland," a Middle America of his own imagination, forever at odds with the alien East and the flaky West. From the 1920s through the mid-1950s, he was editor and owner of the Chicago Tribune, a joyously combative conservative broadsheet that under his leadership grew to become the most widely read full-size daily in the United States. To admirers he was the scourge of bleeding-heart liberals, an emblem of the Old Order in the age of the New Deal. To detractors he was a half-crazed demagogue whose personal exploitation of a powerful news medium was a flagrant abuse of the public trust. In fact, he was all this -- and more. Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Tribune, The Colonel is the first biography to draw on McCormick's personal papers. Richard Norton Smith has written a vivid, candid, sympathetic life of an American original, a lifelong controversialist whose outspoken views, for better and for worse, shaped the political temper of his times. "I was determined to lead a great life, an exotic life," McCormick wrote, and for once he was guilty of understatement. Patterning himself on his grandfather Joseph Medill, he found fame as a municipal reformer, cleaning up Chicago's water supply. During World War I, he was the sole American correspondent to accompany the Russian Army; later, as an officer of the U.S. First Division, he fought with distinction in the Battle of Cantigny. He was a strident isolationist whose hobby was military strategy, an implacable anglophobe who adored a good fox hunt, a finger-pointing moralist whose private life bordered on the scandalous. As owner-editor of the Tribune, he was a ruthless competitor, yet he was also a First Amendment absolutist who effectively, even heroically, defended the press from government coercion. At the height of his power, he oversaw an empire whose holdings included not only the Tribune but also the New York Daily News, the Washington Times-Herald, a large chunk of Canada, and "the most beautiful office building in the world," Chicago's Tribune Tower. Richard Norton Smith tells McCormick's story with humor, verve, and an eagle eye for revealing detail. Here is McCormick exposing the fiscal crimes of Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, investigating the gangland murder of a corrupt reporter, and holding Henry Ford up to ridicule in "the trial of the century." Here is McCormick at his most indomitable, at war with his nemesis, FDR, who sought unsuccessfully to indict him for treason. The Colonel is a story by turns amazing, amusing, and appalling. As Smith remarks of McCormick's Tribune, it will provoke its readers "to spasms of outrage punctuated by laughter."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0395533791/?tag=2022091-20
(The Harvard Century tells the story of how Harvard, Ameri...)
The Harvard Century tells the story of how Harvard, America's oldest and foremost institution of higher learning, has become synonymous with the nation, their goals and standards reflecting each other, each setting the other's agenda. It is also a colorful and intimate narrative of the individual achievements of its leaders and of the intense power struggles that have shaped Harvard as it pioneered in setting the priorities that have served as exemplars for the nation's educational establishment.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671460358/?tag=2022091-20
(A dramatic portrait of George Washington's presidential y...)
A dramatic portrait of George Washington's presidential years, Patriarch is a gripping story of politics and statecraft. Smith describes Washington's struggle to preside over the bitter feud between Jefferson and Hamilton--two brilliant members of his cabinet--while attempting to distinguish the first presidency.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0395524423/?tag=2022091-20
(The Doles is their joint autobiography a look at Washingt...)
The Doles is their joint autobiography a look at Washington at the highest levels, an account of a marriage that has thrived in the pressure cooker of Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671602020/?tag=2022091-20
Smith, Richard Norton was born on October 2, 1953 in Leominster, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Frank Chandler and Ruth Adeline (Richards) Smith.
Bachelor in Government magna cum laude, Harvard College, 1975.
Intern The White House, Washington, 1975. Freelance writer Washington Post, The Real Paper, and other publications, various cities, 1975-1977. Speechwriter Sen. Edward Brooke, Boston, 1977-1978, Sen.
Robert Dole, Washington, 1979-1985. Biographer, researcher book on Thomas E. Dewey Rochester, New York, 1980-1981. Speechwriter, consultant various federal officials, Washington, 1981-1987.
Staff speechwriter Sen. Pete Wilson, 1984-1987. Director various presidential libraries and foundations, including Herbert Hoover Library., Dwight D. Eisenhower Center, Ronald Reagan Library., Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library., 1987—2001.
Speechwriter President Ronald Reagan, V.P. and Mistress Dan Quayle, and others, Washington, 1989. Director Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, Lawrence, Kansas, 2001—2003. Executive director Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. and Museum, Springfield, Illinois, 2003—2006.
Scholar-in-residence of history & public policy George Mason University, Washington, since 2006. Consultant Nixon and Reagan Libraries, 1989-1991.
(The Harvard Century tells the story of how Harvard, Ameri...)
(The Doles is their joint autobiography a look at Washingt...)
(A dramatic portrait of George Washington's presidential y...)
(For most of his varied and colorful career, Colonel Rober...)
(Book by Smith, Richard Norton)
(Book by Smith, Richard Norton)
Member White House bicentennial planning committee, Washington, since 1990. Member World World War II 50th anniversary planning committee National Archives, Washington, since 1991.