Every so often, a book comes along and, besides being entertaining and educational, reminds us that so much has gone on in the past century – tumultuous events, colossal changes and incredible personalities – that our brains can’t keep track of it.
But you’d think that history would have kept better track of a newspaper reporter and writer whose work entertained and helped millions of readers because, after all, the newspaper industry is all about ensuring that its personalities and advances are well known and continue to be.
That’s not the case with Elsie Robinson, however, the subject of “Listen, World!” a biography by Allison Gilbert and my friend Julia Scheeres, the latter the author of two books I’ve long admired, “Jesus Land,” my fellow Indiana native’s recounting of her years rebelling against evangelical punishment of juveniles, and “A Thousand Lives,” an affecting reconstruction of the end of the cult of Rev. Jim Jones through the eyes of the people that followed him to Guyana.
For “Listen, World!” Scheeres and Gilbert have done the world and the history of journalism a great favor in telling the life of Robinson, who in the late 1880s and well into the mid-1900s, became a writer who was almost unparalleled in her time or any other: Robinson grew from humble beginnings to become one of the most highly paid newspaper writers and columnists of the time. Her platform in the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst (think “Citizen Kane”) brought her work to millions of readers every day.
Robinson was a blazer of trails and opinion maker although, as the authors note, she is largely forgotten now. I think most of us who worked in the newspaper industry know that fame isn’t the reason you get into the business – it wasn’t for Elsie, who had a lifelong unquenchable desire to write – but that someone read by millions every day could be overlooked within a half-century of her death is startling.
“Listen, World!” does an admirable job of remedying that.
keithroysdon 