Book Description
Through their dynastic control of The New York Times, the
Ochses and Sulzbergers have been the most powerful family in
twentieth-century America. Not only have they owned the Times
for more than a hundred years, but a family member has always
been at the paper's helm, a position that has given them
enormous influence and has been passed down as a birthright
through four generations. Yet by design they have always been
intensely private, shunning the visibility their stature
inherently commands. The Trust is the first full-scale
portrait of this modern monarchy, a dramatic saga set against
a backdrop of world events and the burden and privilege of
wealth and power. Here is the story of Adolph Ochs, a
visionary dedicated to presenting the news objectively, a man
who appeared supremely confident yet was often racked by
depression and insecurity; of his daughter, Iphigene, an
exceptional woman whose gender prevented her from achieving
official authority at the Times but who used her position as
family matriarch to foster and guard its mystique; of her
husband, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who began his career at the
Times as an unpromising son-in-law but went on to become a
brilliant and controversial publisher, steering the paper
through the crises of World War II, the Holocaust, and the
excesses of McCarthyism; of his only son, Punch, who came to
the publisher's job with little discernible talent, yet
proved tough enough to guide the paper to its greatest
journalistic and financial heights; and of the paper's most
recent leader, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who struggles daily
with the task of preserving his forebears' values amid the
uncertainties of a digital age.
With novelistic drive and detail, The Trust tells the
story of how the domestic dramas of one extraordinary clan
shaped the pages of the greatest newspaper in the world; of a
Jewish family that found itself under attack for its policies
from both anti-Semites and Jews alike; of succession battles,
human frailty, and tremendous affluence; and of the legacy of
public responsibility that has driven the family to serve as
devoted stewards of a trust they hold sacred.
The Trust was written with the full cooperation of the
Ochses and Sulzbergers and unconditional access to The New
York Times' archives, but with the authors retaining complete
independence. The result is not only a richly detailed
portrait of an American dynasty but a fascinating chronicle
of the twentieth century.
