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Personal History is the 1997 autobiography of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. It won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography,[1] and received widespread critical acclaim for its candour in dealing with her husband's mental illness and the challenges she faced in a male-dominated working environment.
The main themes of the book include:
- Graham's complex and often difficult relationship with her mother;
- her family's involvement with The Washington Post from 1933 onwards;
- her relationship with her husband Philip Graham;
- Graham and Phil's relationships with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, especially Johnson's appointment as Kennedy's running-mate;
- Philip's mental illness and eventual suicide;
- Graham's evolution from a housewife to the chairman of a major publishing company;
- her growing awareness of feminist issues;
- the legal battle over the Pentagon Papers;
- The Post’s coverage of Watergate; and
- her relationship to the labor movement, first as an activist, then as a reporter, then with the strikes at the Post, most notably the 1975–1976 pressmen's strike.
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