Ida Tarbell

Portrait of a Muckraker

Biography & Memoir
Cover of the book Ida Tarbell by Kathleen Brady, University of Pittsburgh Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Kathleen Brady ISBN: 9780822980162
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press Publication: October 15, 1989
Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press Language: English
Author: Kathleen Brady
ISBN: 9780822980162
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication: October 15, 1989
Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press
Language: English

In this first definitive biography of Ida Tarbell, Kathleen Brady has written a readable and widely acclaimed book about one of America’s great journalists.

Ida Tarbell’s generation called her “a muckraker” (the term was Theodore Roosevelt’s, and he didn’t intend it as a compliment), but in our time she would have been known as “an investigative reporter,” with the celebrity of Woodward and Bernstein. By any description, Ida Tarbell was one of the most powerful women of her time in the United States: admired, feared, hated. When her History of the Standard Oil Company was published, first in McClure’s Magazine and then as a book (1904), it shook the Rockefeller interests, caused national outrage, and led the Supreme Court to fragment the giant monopoly.

A journalist of extraordinary intelligence, accuracy, and courage, she was also the author of the influential and popular books on Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln, and her hundreds of articles dealt with public figures such as Louis Pateur and Emile Zola, and contemporary issues such as tariff policy and labor.  During her long life, she knew Teddy  Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Henry James, Samuel McClure, Lincoln Stephens, Herbert Hoover, and many other prominent Americans. She achieved more than almost any woman of her generation, but she was an antisuffragist, believing that the traditional roles of wife and mother were more important than public life. She ultimately defended the business interests she had once attacked.

To this day, her opposition to women’s rights disturbs some feminists. Kathleen Brady writes of her: “[She did not have] the flinty stuff of which the cutting edge of any revolution is made. . . . Yet she was called to achievement in a day when women were called only to exist.  Her triumph was that she succeeded. Her tragedy ws that she was never to know it.”

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In this first definitive biography of Ida Tarbell, Kathleen Brady has written a readable and widely acclaimed book about one of America’s great journalists.

Ida Tarbell’s generation called her “a muckraker” (the term was Theodore Roosevelt’s, and he didn’t intend it as a compliment), but in our time she would have been known as “an investigative reporter,” with the celebrity of Woodward and Bernstein. By any description, Ida Tarbell was one of the most powerful women of her time in the United States: admired, feared, hated. When her History of the Standard Oil Company was published, first in McClure’s Magazine and then as a book (1904), it shook the Rockefeller interests, caused national outrage, and led the Supreme Court to fragment the giant monopoly.

A journalist of extraordinary intelligence, accuracy, and courage, she was also the author of the influential and popular books on Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln, and her hundreds of articles dealt with public figures such as Louis Pateur and Emile Zola, and contemporary issues such as tariff policy and labor.  During her long life, she knew Teddy  Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Henry James, Samuel McClure, Lincoln Stephens, Herbert Hoover, and many other prominent Americans. She achieved more than almost any woman of her generation, but she was an antisuffragist, believing that the traditional roles of wife and mother were more important than public life. She ultimately defended the business interests she had once attacked.

To this day, her opposition to women’s rights disturbs some feminists. Kathleen Brady writes of her: “[She did not have] the flinty stuff of which the cutting edge of any revolution is made. . . . Yet she was called to achievement in a day when women were called only to exist.  Her triumph was that she succeeded. Her tragedy ws that she was never to know it.”

More books from University of Pittsburgh Press

Cover of the book Blood Pages by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Astoria by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Communities of Science in Nineteenth-Century Ireland by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book The Widening Spell of the Leaves by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Newsworld by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Wild Hundreds by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Babel by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Victorian Literature and the Physics of the Imponderable by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Two And Two by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Engineering the Environment by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Tangible Belonging by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book I Would Lie to You if I Could by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book Reimagining Brazilian Television by Kathleen Brady
Cover of the book In Search of the Sacred Book by Kathleen Brady
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy