The Rose Man of Sing Sing

This biography of the early 20th-century newspaper giant who became news after killing his wife "has the pace and detail of an engrossing historical novel" (Boston Herald). As city editor of Joseph Pulitzer's New York Evening World, Charles E. Chapin was the quintessential newsroom tyrant: he drove reporters relentlessly, setting the pace for evening press journalism with blockbuster stories from the Harry K. Thaw trial to the sinking of the Titanic. At the pinnacle of his fame in 1918, Chapin was deeply depressed and facing financial ruin. He decided to kill himself and his wife Nellie. But after shooting Nellie in her sleep, he failed to take his own life. The trial made one hell of a story for the Evening World's competitors, and Chapin was sentenced to life in Ossining, New York's, infamous Sing Sing Prison. In The Rose Man of Sing Sing, James McGrath Morris tracks Chapin's journey from Chicago street...