The Uncrowned King, a long, detailed, and occasionally clever book about William Randolph Hearst’s explosive entry into the New York newspaper market at the end of the 19th century, can be enjoyed on three different levels.

First, an American history buff will devour Whyte’s vivid depiction of the era, from his account of the 1896 election – one of the most important and transformative in American history – as seen through the lens of Hearst’s New York Journal and its competitors. The accounts of the Spanish-American War are equally well drawn, featuring a mix of tragedy and surprising comedy.

Second, journalists and communications scholars will be interested in the internal machinations of the Journal and the other papers in New York at the time. Whyte describes the backgrounds of editors and journalists in great detail, often going so far as to stipulate their salaries. These specifics build toward Whyte’s central argument: that Hearst’s paper, often considered one of the worst examples of yellow journalism, was not nearly as bad as its reputation.

Finally, close observers of present-day Canadian journalism will likely be tempted to parse the book for reflections on Whyte’s role as the founding editor of the National Post (where, in the interest of full disclosure, I worked happily for one summer, although I never had any interaction with Whyte). Now the editor of Maclean’s magazine, Whyte notes in the prologue that he first become interested in Hearst’s story when he was preparing to launch the Post. For those interested in drawing comparisons, Whyte’s apparent fascination with the above-market salaries that Hearst gave to star reporters he poached from other papers may help explain the Post’s free-spending ways at the time of its launch.