Letters From John Cowles To His Family 1943 - 1976
A family history

John Cowles (1898-1983), a leading Minnesota newspaper publisher and advisor to several US presidents, was born in Algona, Iowa, the fifth of six children of Gardner and Florence Call Cowles. In 1903, his father, a school superintendent and banker, purchased a struggling newspaper in the capital city. The Des Moines Register became one of the most influential newspapers in the United States and the beginning of a media empire that in two generations included the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, pace-setting magazines such as LOOK, Flair, Quick, Harper's and TV and radio stations.
Cowles began his career in 1921 as a reporter for The Register. In 1935, when he and his brother, Gardner "Mike" Cowles, purchased the Minneapolis Star a newspaper that became the dominant paper of the Twin Cities, Time magazine applauded the Cowles family's success and featured John's picture on its cover. The two brothers helped persuade Wendell Willkie to become a candidate for president in 1940 and 1944, and they supported Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. John Cowles was a foreign policy advisor to Republican and Democratic presidents. He was a director or trustee of educational and philanthropic institutions such as the Ford Foundation and Harvard University, and a director of General Mills, Equitable Life Insurance of Iowa, and General Electric Co, among many others.

These letters, written by John Cowles to his family, portray the commercial, political, and social world of a progressive American family at the end of World War II. They were found in his office at the Minneapolis Star and Tribune after his death and are part of the Cowles archives at Drake University in Des Moines. This volume covers events of the year 1944.

Editor of the series is Elizabeth Ballantine, a granddaughter of John Cowles. She is a lawyer and journalist in McLean, Virginia.

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