cover image The Yellow Kids: Foreign Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism

The Yellow Kids: Foreign Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism

Joyce Milton. HarperCollins Publishers, $22.95 (412pp) ISBN 978-0-06-016115-6

Students of newspaper history are familiar with the era of yellow journalism (1895-1905), which was closely associated with New York City and spurred on by a battle for circulation between Joseph Pulitzer's World and William Randolph Hearst's Journal . The best-known correspondents, called traveling commissioners, were Richard Harding Davis and Stephen Crane; less famous, but possibly more influential, was Sylvester ``Harry'' Scovel, Pulitzer's top overseas reporter. In this informative and insightful volume, Milton ( The Rosenberg File ) writes Scovel's biography and a history of the Spanish-American War, while stealing glances at the Greco-Turkish War and the Klondike gold rush, keeping these events and the journalists who covered them in conscientious perspective. (Aug.)