Description:

No pen was more feared in Washington politics and society than Drew Pearson s. His syndicated column, "Washington Merry-Go-Round," won him the sobri- quet, "Scorpion-on-the-Potomac." In a career spanning nine presidencies, his mil- lions of words regularly reached more Americans than those of any other jour- nalist. With his marriage in 1925 to the daughter of Cissy Patterson ("the most powerful and perhaps the most hated woman in America") --granddaughter of Joseph Medill (founder of the Chicago Tribune) and sister of Captain Joseph M. Patterson (founder of the New York Daily News)--Drew Pearson entered with passport the corridors of political, social and sexual intrigue which were to fascinate him to the end of his life. Able and willing to humiliate cabinet secretaries, enrage Presidents, embarrass the military, expose corrupt Congressmen and Senators, Pearson s intelligence sys- tem infuriated almost everyone he had reason to attack.