Katharine Graham

"Personal History," by Katharine Graham, Knopf. 625 pages. $29.95.In December 1937, Katharine Graham, a 20-year-old senior at the University of Chicago, wrote her older sister Bis that she wanted to go into the newspaper business to become a labor reporter and maybe someday "working up to political reporting." Clearly, she had some reservations about her ability to be - as she wrote - a "GOOD reporter ... a gift given by God to very few."Graham never realized that dream, but in the course of 30 years at the helm of the Washington Post, she fostered a newsroom environment where hundreds of ambitious, idealistic and determined reporters realized theirs.

POWER, PRIVILEGE AND THE POST: THE KATHARINE GRAHAM STORY. Carol Felsenthal. Putnam.512 pages. $29.95. Biographies aren't normally described as page turners, but this one certainly qualifies. Is it a good book? Now that's another matter.Like many modern pop-biographies, this story of Washington Post chairman Katharine Graham is breezy, gossipy and slightly voyeuristic. The author, a Chicago free-lancer who has written two other biographies, capitalizes on Mrs. Graham's exceptional life in what seems part serious exploration, part celebrity expose.

Washington -- What Americans remember most about Benjamin C. Bradlee might be that little shimmy of the hipsJason Robards delivered in "All the President's Men."It was a half-tango as Mr. Robards, playing Mr. Bradlee, walked away from Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, who had just told him they had another story threatening to topple the president of the United States.That is one thing movies do -- confuse the actor with the role. The shimmy may have been Mr. Robards' invention.But it captured something, friends say, about Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post and the most famous newspaper editor of his generation, who recently announced he will retire in September after his 70th birthday.