Horace Greeley

A distinguished historian once described Horace Greeley to me by saying, “There's an unguided missile.” The description seems apt, but James M. Lundberg argues in his fascinating new biography that a consistent ideology did indeed guide the New York Tribune's famously mercurial editor: “Over his four decades in journalism, he pursued an American consensus that would break through rival sectional identities, persistent localism, divergent expressions of republicanism, and contested definitions of the nation itself” (p. 2). Lundberg also promises to examine Greeley “as both person and personage, an individual as well as an idea” (p. 3). Did Lundberg prove his argument and accomplish his goal? Yes, he clearly achieved his objective. Lundberg brings Greeley to life as himself and in his personas, whether the character in a Mark Twain story or the editor the public considered the author of every word in the New York Tribune. Greeley

Argument (complex analysis · Art · Art history · Biography · Character (mathematics · Ideology · Journalism · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American and British Literature Analysis · American Literature and Humor Studies · History · Law · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis