Although he allowed himself only forty-five years of life, twenty-seven in the craft he loved, Paul Y. Anderson, at his death in 1938, had helped reinvigorate muckraking, nudged forward a fledgling movement toward press criticism, and lent his unique charisma to a newspaper that served as a pioneer setter of standards of daily journalism. Anderson's reporting and writing were honored by a 1929 Pulitzer Prize and a 1937 Headliners' Club award and have been collected in treasuries of the craft and in textbooks. They are distinguished for their accuracy, conciseness, flair, and courage. His role in exposing the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s did much to reawaken the press's image of itself as a watchdog of government.

Born in Knoxville to William Holston and Elizabeth Dill Haynes Anderson, Paul Anderson was the only son among the three of their six children who survived infancy. When Anderson was three years old...