"Arresting portrait" -- good notice for Whyte's Hearst book

Jack Rosenthal, the former editorial page editor of the New York Times, gives a good review in Sunday's Times book review to Maclean's editor Ken Whyte's biography of William Randolph Hearst. Rosenthal says The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (Counterpoint) doesn't break much new ground, but demonstrates a prodigious amount of background reading and "largely succeeds" in what he set out to do, to "de-demonize" the mogul.

This is not a new portrait. In “The Chief,” his masterly biography of Hearst’s whole life, published in 2000, David Nasaw drew similar conclusions that challenged the historical Hearst mythology. Whyte nevertheless presents another, arresting portrait — of the emerging power of the press at the end of the 19th century.

(By the way, Rosenthal refers to Whyte as "a Canadian editor and publisher" without mentioning Maclean's. It would be like running a review of a book by the editor of Newsweek without mentioning that fact.)