The Muckrakers

At the beginning of the century, a band of crusading journalists and reformers – sometimes radical, often courageous, always determined – altered the course of American life. These were the muckrakers, the men and women whose vivid exposes of political corruption, industrial brutality, corporate greed, and social injustice set in motion a surge of reform in the United States. This classic account of muckraking, written in a lively, colorful style that echoes the frequent flamboyance of its subject, has had an extraordinary publishing life. First published under the title Crusaders for American Liberalism, it has been revised and published in new editions several times over the years. The present edition (1976) carries the muckraking tradition through World War II, McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, Korea, Vietnam, Ralph Nader, and Watergate.