This is a strange sort of hybrid book – part non-fiction biography and part fictionalised biography, and for me it didn’t come off at all successfully. The purely biographical sections were fine – Pulitzer was an interesting and influential man – but the fictionalised elements were really jarring and inauthentic. Mainly because of the invented and imagine conversations. The dialogue incorporated slang and 20th century expressions, and was very clunky. I’m not sure why the author did this – perhaps to appeal to a younger audience? To make the book more “sexy”? Unfortunately it just irritated me and I found the book unreadable as a consequence. Give me a straightforward non-fiction biography any day or a straightforward fictionalised one – but this attempt to marry the two failed in my opinion.

The author did a brilliant job of capturing the time period in this novel. The characters and plot were also well written. This was a great piece of historical fiction!

Excellent peek into the life and times of Joseph Pulitzer. No one is safe from the newspaperman’s microscope. Parallels to today’s “news” reporting stood out to me. Facts weren’t nearly as important as sales.