The subject of this book had about as interesting a personal career as one could possibly imagine. Dana started out as a Brook Farm social reformer, before becoming Horace Greeley's right-hand man at the New York "Tribune," than achieving a certain notoriety as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's field operative, only to go on to be his own boss, and achieve serious notoriety, as the publisher of the New York "Sun," and, apparently, repudiating everything he worked for during the Civil War. The impression that I come away with from this book is that Dana was willing to give his loyalty, but also was one of those people who just thought they knew better what was really going on, and who didn't betray much introspection; messianic might not be a bad one-word description. If nothing else this book is now the go-to study of Dana's life, as his supposed memoir (ghost-written by Ida Tarbell) is, to put it mildly, problematic. ( )