The Press: In Dubious Battle

When Clendenin J. Ryan, millionaire, amateur political reformer and onetime assistant to New York's Mayor La Guardia, decided last summer to write a book on politics, he got together with Author & Lecturer William Bradford Huie. Turned by a self-described "yarn spinner," Huie's sensational stories, such as his highly exaggerated account of the missing uranium at Chicago's Argonne Laboratory (TIME, May 30, 1949), made lively, if occasionally misleading, reading. But they dropped the book for something much bigger. Huie and Ryan decided to buy the faltering American Mercury. Since the Mercury's circulation was...

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