“Harry Haskell chronicles the evolution of daily journalism in America from its original role as a city- and nation-builder to something nearer a medium of popular entertainment. Illuminating and meticulously researched, Boss-Busters and Sin Hounds gives insight into how news empires are built, the public purposes they serve, the changes that overtake them, and the uncertain futures they now face.”—C. W. Gusewelle, Kansas City Star columnist and retired foreign editor 

“A masterful piece of historical exposition and analysis. Haskell’s writing is lucid, vigorous, and often amusingly ironic. The richness and complexity of his narrative never falter. Bravo!”—John Dizikes, winner of the National Book Award for Opera in America: A Cultural History 

“This could be the best book on Kansas City history published in decades. The writing is excellent, literate, and informed.”—William S. Worley, author of J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City 

“Like the best history, Harry Haskell’s Boss-Busters and Sin Hounds uncovers, in vivid, commanding detail, a past that we thought we knew but didn’t. Who remembers that Theodore Roosevelt, Lincoln Steffens, Eugene Debs, and Helen Keller once turned to the Kansas City Star and its “insurgent” founder, William Rockhill Nelson, for leadership in the progressive cause? Haskell does and in his exemplary retelling, the language of Nelson’s Star rings out like a fight song.”—Whitney Terrell, author of The Huntsman and The King of Kings County

            At the turn of the twentieth century, the Kansas City Star was a trust-busting newspaper acclaimed for its crusading progressive spirit; fifty years later it was a busted trust, targeted in the most important antitrust action ever brought against an American daily. Now Harry Haskell tells the tale of the Star’s rise and decline against the richly textured backdrop of Kansas City—the story of how a newspaper and a city grew together and ultimately grew apart.

Boss-Busters and Sin Hounds takes readers into the city room and executive offices of one of the most respected American newspapers, whose influence extended beyond its own community to international affairs. Re-creating life at the Star from the inside, the book traces the shifting fortunes of a great newspaper and the compelling “power of purpose” it exerted from the birth of the progressive movement in the 1880s to the 1950s.

            This fascinating tale—with underlying themes of sin and redemption, high-minded ideals and gutter politics—is populated by a cast of larger-than-life characters, ranging from power brokers to presidents and including such Kansas City notables as Tom Pendergast, J. C. Nichols, and Frank Walsh. But at heart this is the story of three men with contrasting personalities and agendas who shaped the newspaper over more than three-quarters of a century: William Rockhill Nelson, among the last of the great “personal” editors from journalism’s golden age; the scholarly Henry J. Haskell, who led the Star to its peak of influence in the 1930s and ’40s; and Roy A. Roberts, who went on to combine the roles of newspaper publisher and political kingmaker.

Along the way, Haskell recounts such milestones as the Star’s role in the City Beautiful movement that helped transform America’s urban centers; the nation’s entry into two global wars; a bold but ill-starred experiment in employee ownership; and the paper’s on-again, off-again battle with Boss Pendergast’s legendary political machine. And he brings into focus issues that remain timely today, from social and political reform to the very role of newspapers in a democracy, while also drawing parallels with recent American history—disillusionment with liberalism, the hijacking of the GOP by the far right, America’s go-it-alone attitude—that are as alarming as they are instructive. 

As Haskell shows, the evolution of American journalism from crusading newspapers to pawns of corporate culture was already under way in the early 1900s and was substantially complete by midcentury. Boss-Busters and Sin Hounds chronicles the glory days of an illustrious newspaper as it opens new windows on a city’s history.

About the Author
            Harry Haskell is the grandson of Henry J. Haskell and a former music critic for the Kansas City Star. He is author of The Early Music Revival: A History and The Attentive Listener: Three Centuries of Music Criticism and lives in Guilford, Connecticut.