Luce and His Empire (1975) By W. A. Swanberg

 

Luce … and His Empire.  That would be Henry Robinson Luce, born in China in 1898, the son of Presbyterian missionaries.  His achievements include being the Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines.  No less than Winston Churchill publicly named him one of the most influential people in America. His name is synonymous with the period of history that came to be known as the American Century.

Author W. A. Swanberg’s extensive biography of Luce covers three major topics:  1) his invention of the weekly “news” magazine format used by Time, building it into a world-wide publishing giant; 2) his use of his publishing empire to try and make post-dynasty China both a Christian nation, and a democracy; and 3) his flagrant use of political propaganda, thinly disguised as objective news.  If one is concerned about the state of “news” in the world today, but especially in the United States, then note this: Luce’s legacy has been a “how-to” blueprint for Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News/News Corp. media empire.

Luce was Yale, Class of 1920, which comes with elitist baggage and perhaps one of if not the best alumni networking pedigrees in the world.  Out of Yale, Luce and friend/academic rival Briton Hadden, jointly founded Time magazine with initial investments coming from fellow alumni.  Their initial strategic plan was to not have correspondents, but to gather stories from daily newspapers and condense them, unattributed, in a weekly newsmagazine.  Their premise was that busy people did not have enough time available to read everything, yet they wanted to be informed on current events. 

This business plan quickly morphed into not only choosing what stories were important enough to be printed, but also telling readers why.  As the Time’s editors, they would pick what news they wished to highlight, and re-write it to fit their political beliefs.  The “cover of Time” quickly became the most important place in American politics. The “thankful” public subscribed in the millions – and the advertising dollars came rolling in.  Hadden lived long enough to see their joint business become a financial success but died long before it peaked under Luce’s sole control.

Luce took the company’s financial success, and built it into a publishing Empire, making him one of the richest and most influential men in the world.  He would marshal that power in support of his causes, ranging from supporting the corrupt Chiang Kai Shek in the Chinese civil war (because he was nominally a Christian and definitely an oligarch), to bashing Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, yet have a cordial relationship with John F. Kennedy (or more accurately, JFK’s father Joseph Kennedy).  Militantly anti-communist, Luce was the country’s chief advocate of a Cold War strategy.  Historically, the book spans everything from the Great Depression to the Vietnam “Conflict.”  Luce died in 1967.

Recommendation:  Yes. I found Luce and His Empire to be critical to any examination of Twentieth Century world history; not to mention the birth of today’s biased “journalism” format.