Born in Hungary to a prosperous family, Joseph Pulitzer ran away from home at age eighteen to embark on a military career. After the Austrian army and the French Foreign Legion both rejected him because of his poor eyesight, he signed up with an agent of the Union army of the United States recruiting in Europe in late 1864. At the end of the Civil War he found himself penniless in New York City and worked at a series of miserable jobs. By 1868, however, he had become a citizen and was hired as a reporter for the leading German-language daily in the nation, Carl Schurz's St. Louis Westliche Post. Pulitzer soon became a top newsman and bought a share of the paper. He was then elected to the Missouri State Assembly and campaigned for the publisher Horace Greeley, who was a presidential candidate in 1872. He left...