When Giants Ruled: The Story of Park Row, Ny's Great Newspaper Street

"When Giants Ruled" quickly involves the reader in the drama of print journalism's most robust era of cutthroat competition. Hy Turner demonstrates a strong talent for condensing the story of newspapers to its essence. He never overburdens you with details, though occasionally I found myself wishing for more. Meanwhile, the reader is often rewarded with new and colorful anecdotes to familiar events in our nation's history. Turner's superb writing skills keep the reader delightfully moving from one page to the next, while sometimes pausing to more fully enjoy the unfolding drama. It is a book that could only have been written by someone to whom journalism was obviously a first love.

HyTurner has given us an amazingly exciting history of the rough and tumble world of New York City newspapers, how they got started and who started them. He recounts scoops, scandals, dirty tricks, sensational reporting of sensational stories, and the lives and careers of colorful men and women who invented all of the techniques for digging up the who, what, where, when, why and how of events from murders to wars. What might have been dry and dreary reading that only a journalism pofessor could care about has been presented as a compelling saga that reads like a novel. If you enjoyed the Orson Welles classic film "Citizen Kane" and W.A.Swanberg's "Citizen Hearst" you will love Hy Turner's beautifully written and scrupulously researched story of the titans of print who once rubbed elbows, and often jammed them in the ribs of their competitors in a short block of downtown-New York's newspaper row.And if you wonder how the Sunday comic strips got their start, Hy Turner has the answer. This book also relates how a shrewd newspaper mogul collected pennies to build the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, and sold a lot of newspapers. Everyone who reads a newspaper is in debt to the giants of Park Row, and anyone who cares about journalism should read this terrific book.