Exposés and excess : muckraking in America, 1900-2000 / Cecelia Tichi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tichi, Cecelia, 1942-

Series:

Personal takes

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Journalism--Social aspects--United States.

Journalism.

Journalism--Social aspects.

Social problems--Press coverage.

United States.

Social problems--Press coverage--United States.

Social problems.

United States--Social conditions--20th century.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

234 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2004]

Summary:

From robber barons to titanic CEOs, from the labor unrest of the 1880s to the mass layoffs of the 1990s, two American Gilded Ages-one in the early 1900s, another in the final years of the twentieth century-mirror each other in their laissez-faire excess and rampant social crises. Both eras have ignited the civic passions of investigative writers who have drafted diagnostic blueprints for urgently needed change. The compelling narratives of the muckrakers-Upton Sinclair. Ida Tarbell. Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker among them-became best-sellers and prize-winners a hundred years ago: today. Cecelia Tichi notes, they have found their worthy successors in writers such as Barbara Ehrenreich. Eric Schlosser, and Naomi Klein.

In Exposes and Excess Tichi explores the two Gilded Ages through the lens of their muckrakers. Drawing from her considerable and wide-ranging work in American studies. Tichi details how the writers of the first muckraking generation used fact-based narratives in magazines such as McClure's to rouse the U.S. public to civic action in an era of unbridled industrial capitalism and fear of the immigrant "dangerous classes." Offering a damning cultural analysis of the new Gilded Age. Tichi depicts a booming, insecure, fortress America of bulked-up baby strollers. McMansion housing, and an obsession with money-as-lifeline in an era of deregulation, yawning income gaps, and idolatry of the market and its rock-star CEOs. No one has captured this period of corrosive boom more acutely than the group of nonfiction writers who burst on the scene in the late 1990s with their exposes of the fast-food industry, the world of low-wage work, inadequate health care, corporate branding, and the multibillion-dollar prison industry. And nowhere have these authors-Ehrenreich. Schlosser, Klein, Laurie Garrett, and Joseph Hallinan-revealed more about their emergence as writers and the connections between journalism and literary narrative than in the rich and insightful interviews that round out the book. With passion and wit, Exposes and Excess brings a literary genre up to date at a moment when America has gone back to the future.

Contents:

1. From The Jungle to Fast Food Nation: American Deja Vu 1

2. Bulked Up and Hollowed Out: Looking Backward, Looking Forward 18

3. Muckrakers c. 1900: Civic Passions, "Righteous Indignation" 62

4. Muckrakers c. 2000 105

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America 113

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal 129

Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 147

Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health 168

Joseph T. Hallinan, Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation 187

Epilogue: Tipping Point, or the Long Goodbye? 207.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [219]-225) and index.

ISBN:

0812237633

OCLC:

52478368