TNR has published a nice Jackson Lears review essay at http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/75608/easy-rider but you have to be a subscriber to access it... ( )

This is an interesting biography of Henry Luce, painting him as a brilliant but very eccentric man. Alan Brinkley details how he built his publishing empire starting with the creation of Time magazine and eventually including Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated. Luce's publications were generally anti-FDR, but were not explicitly political until the 1940 presidential election. His unreserved support for Wendel Wilkie pushed his magazines into blatant advocacy. From then until 1960, when he endorsed JFK, Luce viewed his publications as a means to exert himself and affect the direction of the country.

His biggest and most obvious project was trying the rally support for Chiang Kai-shek's failing regime in China. Luce was born and raised by American missionaries in China. His interest in the country was rekindled by a trip to China during the second Sino-Japanese War when he met Chiang and his wife. From then, he was convinced that Chiang was one of the greatest men of his era and the only hope for China. He hated Truman, whom he always blamed for losing China, but was mixed about Ambassador John Leighton Stuart, who had been a missionary and was, like Luce, a Presbyterian.

Brinkley describes Luce as a lonely man with few friends and a shaky marriage. His real love was having a project or a mission. That mission was initially creating Time and subsequent magazines but then became Wilkie's presidential run. The mission then became supporting WWII, Chiang, and Eisenhower. Luce appeared to be happiest and most energized when throwing himself into one of the projects. Without that sense of mission, he became restless.

This is one of the most readable biographies I have read, yet it is still informative. It spends a bit too much time on Luce's inner turmoil than I would have preferred, but it does paint a very vivid picture of the man. ( )

Henry Luce was the creator of Time, Fortune, Life, Sports Illustrated and their parent company Time Life Books. I was aware of this fact, however, this well written biography informed me how influential Luce really was. Born to Christian missionary parents who lived in China during his formative years, Luce was a precocious and competetive scholar through and including his academic career at Yale. His creative genius was the invention of new magazines with which he hoped to inform, and perhaps educated Mencken's boobousie. As he became sucessfull, he wanted more and more to use his magazines to shape public opinion along paths he believed in. Specifically he wanted a Republican, pro-business voice, with increasing anti-communist leanings. Along the way he perhaps sacrificed journalistic purity; however, he never became "right-wing kooky." He hated FDR, but apparently supported many of this policies. He adored Ike. Although he probably supported Nixon in secret, he also admired Kennedy for his intelligence and vision for America. Above all Luce wanted to affirmatively champion American values with emphasis on the positive - not the negative. Frustrated by his limited role as a publisher, Luce apparently wanted a larger role in the world. His thin skin, however, ensured that he never could have succeeded as a politician. He was somewhat of a cold intellectual who could never develope any intimacy with friends or his wives, whom he serially cheated on. ( )