cover image The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 18801955

The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 18801955

Richard Norton Smith. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $35 (597pp) ISBN 978-0-395-53379-6

Returning from France in 1918 as a colonel in the U.S. Army, Robert R. McCormick (1880-1955) built the Chicago Tribune, in which he inherited a significant share, into a powerful, idiosyncratic giant that dominated the upper Midwest for decades. Although top professionals in many fields shrank into terrified toadies in his presence, the paper was a roaring commercial success, and some of its investigative coups rank with the best anywhere. According to Smith (Thomas E. Dewey and His Times), ""The Colonel,"" who ""needed enemies, it seemed,"" found them everywhere, including his New Dealing Groton classmate Franklin D. Roosevelt. Allying himself with prewar isolationists and homegrown fascists, he proved even more dangerous in wartime: thanks to his major-league reporters, the Tribune ran the pilfered story of American contingency plans for war with Germany three days before Pearl Harbor and exposed, in 1942, the top-secret code breaking that made possible the U.S. victory over the Japanese at Midway. (McCormick evaded legal retribution.) The Colonel's postwar stewardship was weakened by heavy drinking, increasing reclusiveness, two divorces and his lack of an heir, yet he managed to keep a jaundiced eye on things, raging to the end ""like Lear on the heath."" Writing with a tart wit leavened by wry sympathy, Smith engagingly evokes an American original. Photos not seen by PW. (July) FYI: Publication marks the 150th anniversary of the Chicago Tribune.