ebooks The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club by Marlena de Blasi in History

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From National Book Award–winner Michael J. Arlen and screenwriter Alice Arlen; here is the fascinating; adventurous life of Alicia Patterson; who became; at age thirty-four; one of the youngest and most successful newspaper publishers in America when she founded Newsday.With The Huntress; the Arlens give us a revealing picture of the lifestyle and traditions of the Patterson-Medill publishingdynasty—one of the country’s most powerful and influential newspaper families—but also Alicia’s rebellious early years and her dominating father; Joseph Patterson. Founder and editor of the New York Daily News; Patterson was a complicated and glamorous figure who in his youth had reported on Pancho Villa in Mexico and had outraged his conservative Chicago family by briefly espousing socialism.Not once but twice; first at age twenty; Alicia agreed to marry men her father chose; despite having her own more interesting suitors. He encouraged her to do the difficult training required for an aviation transport license; in 1934 she became only the tenth woman in America to receive one. Patterson brought her along to London to meet with Lord Beaverbrook; to Rome to meet Mussolini; and to Moscow in 1937; at the time of Stalin’s “show trials;” where a young George Kennan took her under his wing. Alicia caught the journalism bug writing for Liberty magazine; an offshoot of the Daily News. A trip to French Indochina highlighted her hunting skills and made the sultan of Johor an ardent admirer; another trip would involve India;the dangerous sport of pigsticking; several maharajas; and a tiger hunt. A third marriage; to Harry Guggenheim; blew hot and cold but it did last; it was with him that she started Newsday in a former car dealership on Long Island. Governor Adlai E. Stevenson; two-time Democratic candidate for president; would be one of her last admirers.With access to family archives of journals and letters; Michael and Alice Arlen have written an astonishing portrait of a maverick newspaperwoman and an intrepid adventurer; told with humor; compassion; and a profound understanding of a time and place.(With black-and-white illustrations throughout)