plenary speaker

richard norton smith

Plenary Session

Thursday, October 15

3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Richard Norton Smith is the author of The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 1880-1955.

"It is hard to imagine that any other biographer could have made so much out of such unpromising material."

Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

"An edition doesn't go by, I'll wager, that fails to send the Colonel spinning in his grave. But he can take some consolation from this final monument by Richard Norton Smith, a biography fairer and more judicious than the Colonel would have liked, but brimming on every page with the dazzling energy that made him a giant."

Andrew Ferguson, The American Spectator

"Whether fighting at Cantigny or the White House, whether brilliant or unhinged, the colonel was a fascinating, spontaneously generous, gossip-loving, hard-core conservative whose army-division and newspaper employees were surrogate family. Ironically, the admittedly phobic titan who drove around Chicago in a khaki-colored Rolls Royce most feared being forgotten. Smith's terrific, broad-shouldered book almost guarantees that that fear will never be realized."

Patricia Hassler, Booklist

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