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A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism
Fordham University Press
October 2003
On Sale: October 1, 2003
Featuring: Charles E. Chapin
484 pages
ISBN: 0823222683
EAN: 9780823222681
Kindle: B004FPYKH0
Paperback / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
Today, seventy-three years after his death, journalists
still tell tales of Charles E. Chapin. As city editor of
Pulitzer's New York Evening World, Chapin was the model of
the take-no-prisoners newsroom tyrant: he drove reporters
relentlessly-and kept his paper in the center ring of the
circus of big-city journalism. From the Harry K. Thaw trial
to the sinking of the Titanic, Chapin set the pace for the
evening press, the CNN of the pre-electronic world of
journalism. In 1918, at the pinnacle of fame, Chapin's world
collapsed. Facing financial ruin, sunk in depression, he
decided to kill himself and his beloved wife Nellie. On a
quiet September morning, he took not his own life, but
Nellie's, shooting her as she slept. After his trial-and one
hell of a story for the World's competitors-he was sentenced
to life in the infamous Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New
York. In this story of an extraordinary life set in the most
thrilling epoch of American journalism, James McGrath Morris
tracks Chapin's rise from legendary Chicago street reporter
to celebrity powerbroker in media-mad New York. His was a
human tragedy played out in the sensational stories of
tabloids and broadsheets. But it's also an epic of
redemption: in prison, Chapin started a newspaper to fight
for prisoner rights, wrote a best-selling autobiography, had
two long-distance love affairs, and tapped his prodigious
talents to transform barren prison plots into world-famous
rose gardens before dying peacefully in his cell in 1930. The first portrait of one of the founding figures of modern
American journalism, and a vibrant chronicle of the
cutthroat culture of scoops and scandals, The Rose Man of
Sing Sing is also a hidden history of New York at its most
colorful and passionate.
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