The View from Xanadu: William Randolph Hearst and United States Foreign Policy

Rating:
Summary: Competent, unspectacular
Review: Mugridge appears to have taken on this task outside his discipline by way of fulfilling a personal commitment. The result seems to reflect this: View from Xanadu is a competent, well-assembled discussion of Hearst's foreign policy views, without a great deal to say. Mugridge locates Hearst - at least until the thirties - firmly within the American Progressive tradition (in spite of his battles with T Roosevelt), and skilfully illuminates his changing views of the Russian Revolution. However, his thesis that Hearst believed his own propaganda about his role in initiating the Spanish-American War and never recovered from it doesn't seem borne out by the assembled evidence.

Beyond this, there isn't a great deal you'll get from this that you won't get more entertainingly - if less well-sourced - from Gore Vidal's novels of the period. On the positive side, the book is well-footnoted and relatively short - you can knock it off in a day.