Rising from a Missouri boyhood and meager prospecting success to owning the most productive copper, silver, and gold mines in the world and being elected a United States senator, George Hearst (1820–91) spent decades veering between the heights of prosperity and the depths of financial ruin. In George Hearst: Silver King of the Gilded Age, Matthew Bernstein captures Hearst’s ascent, casting light on his actions during the Civil War, his tempestuous marriage to his cousin Phoebe, his role as disciplinarian and doting father to future media magnate William Randolph Hearst, and his devious methods of building the greatest mining empire in the West. Whether driving a pack of mules laden with silver from the Comstock Lode to San Francisco, bribing jurors in Pioche and Deadwood, or unearthing bonanzas in Utah and Montana Territories, Hearst’s cunning, energy, and industry were always evident, along with occasional glimmers of the villainy ascribed to him in the television series Deadwood. In this first full-length biography, George Hearst emerges in all his human dimensions and historical significance—an ambitious, complex, flawed, and quintessentially American character.

Illustrated here are the Castle's Spanish ceilings and other architectural fragments, medieval tapestries, Renissance furniture, nineteenth-century sculpture, and wide-ranging examples of European decorative arts, including ceramics, metalworks, textiles, and more."--BOOK JACKET.

The definitive and “utterly absorbing” biography of America’s first news media baron based on newly released private and business documents (Vanity Fair). William Randolph Hearst, known to his staff as the Chief, was a brilliant business strategist and a man of prodigious appetites. By the 1930s, he controlled the largest publishing empire in the United States, including twenty-eight newspapers, the Cosmopolitan Picture Studio, radio stations, and thirteen magazines. He quickly learned how to use this media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power. The son of a gold miner, Hearst underwent a public metamorphosis from Harvard dropout to political kingmaker; from outspoken populist to opponent of the New Deal; and from citizen to congressman. In The Chief, David Nasaw presents an intimate portrait of the man famously characterized in the classic film Citizen Kane. With unprecedented access to Hearst’s personal and business papers, Nasaw details Heart’s relationship with his wife Millicent and his romance with Marion Davies; his interactions with Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, and every American president from Grover Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt; and his acquaintance with movie giants such as Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, and Irving Thalberg. An “absorbing, sympathetic portrait of an American original,” The Chief sheds light on the private life of a very public man (Chicago Tribune).

"From bank failures and presidential races to Hearst's royal entertaining and the opening of the Big Sur highway, the subjects here are part of an ever-changing pageant. Insightful and poignant, humorous and candid, Building for Hearst and Morgan-offers unique perspectives on a vivid era whose like we'll never see again."--BOOK JACKET.

Contains 13 letters, 1877-1879, written from Deadwood and Lead City, Dakota Territory [South Dakota], referring to the Homestake Mine among others in the Black Hills. Also includes one letter from Tucson, Arizona Territory in 1880 and one letter fragment discussing mining and a transcript of George Hearst's 1890 autobiography. Autobiography recounts early life, overland journey from Missouri to Calif. in 1850, mining ventures in California, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, South Dakota, Montana and Mexico, other business enterprises, politics and public offices held, views on Chinese labor and the acquisition of the San Francisco Examiner.

In Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life in Power and Politics Alexandra M. Nickliss offers the first biography of one of the Gilded Age's most prominent and powerful women. A financial manager, businesswoman, and reformer, Phoebe Apperson Hearst was one of the wealthiest and most influential women of the era and a philanthropist, almost without rival, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hearst was born into a humble middle-class family in rural Missouri in 1842, yet she died a powerful member of society's urban elite in 1919. Most people know her as the mother of William Randolph Hearst, the famed newspaper mogul, and as the wife of George Hearst, a mining tycoon and U.S. senator. By age forty-eight, however, Hearst had come to control her husband's extravagant wealth after his death. She shepherded the fortune of the family estate until her own death, demonstrating her intelligence and skill as a financial manager. Hearst supported a number of significant urban reforms in the Bay Area, across the country, and around the world, giving much of her wealth to organizations supporting children, health reform, women's rights and well-being, higher education, municipal policy formation, progressive voluntary associations, and urban architecture and design, among other endeavors. She worked to exert her ideas and implement plans regarding the burgeoning Progressive movement and was the first female regent of the University of California, which later became one of the world's leading research institutions. Hearst held other prominent positions as the first president of the Century Club of San Francisco, first treasurer of the General Federation of Woman's Clubs, first vice president of the National Congress of Mothers, president of the Columbian Kindergarten Association, and head of the Woman's Board of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Phoebe Apperson Hearst tells the story of Hearst's world and examines the opportunities and challenges that she faced as she navigated local, national, and international corridors of influence, rendering a penetrating portrait of a powerful and often contradictory woman.