Author Guide · Lisanne Swart
Books Written by Katharine Graham
Katharine Graham wrote exactly one book. That’s unusual to build an author page around, but Personal History is one of those rare cases where one book is genuinely enough — a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir by a woman who was, by her own account, entirely unprepared to run one of America’s most powerful newspapers, and did it anyway, through the Pentagon Papers, a pressmen’s strike, and Watergate. She also compiled (but did not write) an anthology of writing about the capital, Katharine Graham’s Washington, which is worth knowing about but isn’t really “her book” the way Personal History is.
By Lisanne Swart · 1 book · Memoir · Media · Updated August 2026 · ~7 min read
Quick answer
Katharine Graham wrote one book: Personal History (1997), her memoir as publisher of The Washington Post, which won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. She also compiled an anthology, Katharine Graham’s Washington (2002), but did not author it herself — it’s a collection of other writers’ work about the capital, chosen and introduced by her.
Key facts
- Born: June 16, 1917, New York City · Died: July 17, 2001
- Books written: 1 — Personal History (1997)
- Award: Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, 1998
- Role: Publisher of The Washington Post, 1969–1979; Chairman of the Board, 1973–1991
- Defining events covered: The Pentagon Papers (1971) and Watergate (1972–1974)
- Other work: Compiled (did not author) the anthology Katharine Graham’s Washington (2002)
Why trust this list: This book is one I’ve read in full. Curated by Lisanne Swart.
In this guide
Personal History
Graham was raised in enormous wealth and real emotional isolation — a distant, self-absorbed mother and a father who bought The Washington Post almost as a side project. She married Philip Graham, a brilliant, ambitious lawyer who took over running the paper, and she spent two decades as a supporting wife and mother, entirely outside the business. In 1963, Philip died by suicide after a devastating descent into manic depression, and Katharine — with no business experience and no expectation that she ever would need any — became president, then publisher, of the paper. She ran it through the Pentagon Papers, when the Post’s decision to publish classified documents risked federal prosecution, and through Watergate, when the paper’s reporting on a break-in eventually brought down a president.
What makes this more than a “powerful woman’s memoir” is the honesty. Graham doesn’t retroactively make herself confident or prepared — she describes, in detail, how insecure and unqualified she felt making some of the most consequential decisions in American journalism, and does it without false modesty or self-pity. It won the Pulitzer for a reason: very few memoirs by people who actually held real power are this candid about not knowing what they were doing.
What Personal History is actually about
A difficult inheritance
The first third of the book is about her parents — her father Eugene Meyer, who bought a failing Washington Post in 1933 almost as a philanthropic project, and her mother Agnes, a formidable, self-absorbed woman more invested in her own causes and friendships with famous men than in her children. Graham is unflinching about how little maternal warmth she got.
A marriage and a collapse
Philip Graham was, by every account including his wife’s, brilliant and magnetic — a Supreme Court clerk who became the Post’s publisher and expanded the family’s media holdings significantly. His descent into manic depression, an affair, and eventual suicide in 1963 is recounted with real grief and without villainizing him.
Learning to run a newspaper in public
Graham took over with essentially no preparation, and the book is candid about specific moments of being talked over, undermined, or simply unprepared in rooms full of men who assumed she was a placeholder until a “real” publisher could be found.
The Pentagon Papers and Watergate
The book’s most gripping sections cover 1971 and 1972–74: the legal risk of publishing the Pentagon Papers while the Post was in the middle of a public stock offering, and the sustained pressure from the Nixon administration during Watergate, including direct threats to the company’s broadcast licenses.
The anthology she compiled, not authored
In 2002, Graham put together Katharine Graham’s Washington, a large anthology of essays, memoir excerpts, and journalism about the city by other writers — historical figures, journalists, and political figures across two centuries — with her own introductions framing each section. It’s a genuinely interesting artifact of how she saw the city she’d spent her life in, but it isn’t a book she wrote, and shouldn’t be listed alongside Personal History as if it were.
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