Exposés and Excess: Muckraking in America, 1900 / 2000

by Cecelia Tichi

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 bestsellers and prizewinners 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 Exposés 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 exposés 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, Exposés and Excess brings a literary genre up to date at a moment when America has gone back to the future.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

A fresh start for every new book, and author Tichi's zest for America's Gilded Age and its boldface names draws this seasoned writer to a crime fiction series while uncorking the country's cocktail cultures on the printed (and ebook) page. Tichi digs deep into the Vanderbilt University research library to mine the late 1800-1900s history and customs of Society's "Four Hundred," its drinks, and the ways high-stakes crimes in its midst make for a gripping "Gilded" mystery series that rings true to the tumultuous era. The decades of America's industrial titans and "Queens" of Society have loomed large in Tichi's books for several years, and the titles track her recent projects:
• Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America (and What They Teach Us)
• Jack London: A Writer's Fight for a Better America
• What Would Mrs. Astor Do? A Complete Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age
• Gilded Age Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from the Golden Age
• Jazz Age Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from the Roaring Twenties.
• A Gilded Death (crime fiction)
• Murder, Murder, Murder in Gilded Central Park (crime fiction)
• A Fatal Gilded High Note (crime fiction)
Cecelia is at work on a fourth in the series, “A Gilded Free Fall.” She enjoys membership and posting in Facebook’s The Gilded Age Society. You can read more about Cecelia by visiting her Wikipedia page at: https://bit.ly/Tichiwiki or her website: https://cecebooks.com.