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The Reporterwho Would be King: A Biography of Richard Harding Davis
The Reporterwho Would be King A Biography of Richard Harding Davis Author:Arthur Lubow At the turn of the century, Richard Harding was the most dashing man in America. The real life model for the debonair escort of the Gibson Girl, Davis was so celebrated a war correspondent that a war hardly seemed a war if he didn't cover it. Describing the desperate charge of his friend Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish American War, h... more »e produced both a classic of battle reportage and a legend in American history.
In public, Davis presented the resolutely smiling face that the Victorian era demanded. His private side was darker. Like so many of his cheerful contemporaries, he was plagued by fits of depression, which be choked back in secret. His attachment to his formidable mother, herself a well-known writer, was legendary. He didn't marry untl he was thirty-five, and the union was apparently unconsummated. Only after his mother's death did he divorce his strong-willed, wealthy wife and marry a young vaudeville star. He died less than four years later, during the First World War, at the age of fifty-one. With death came ridicule, then oblivion.
Arthur Lubow's absorbing biography takes us with Davis from youthful assignments at the devasting Johnstown flood and the first execution in the electric chair to the spectacular coronation of the last czar of Russia and Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. As stylish and entertaining as its subject, The Reporter Who Would Be King brings to life an unforgettable era and a forgotten hero whose life is a study in the meaning and fleetingness of fame.« less