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Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker
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.”
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.”
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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About the author
Kathleen Brady
4 books5 followersKathleen Brady's newest biography is Francis and Clare The Struggles of the Saints of Assisi, which won a 2022 Catholic Media Association Award. Learn more at https://bit.ly/3lhXHsh. Her work appears in Commonweal, America, and National Catholic Reporter. Brady is also the author of the critically well-received Lucille, The Life of Lucille Ball, and is featured on the TCM 12-part podcast series on the famed comedienne. In recognition of her biography Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker Brady was named a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. She appears on the NPR Planet Money podcast on Standard Oil and Anti-Trust. The ABC-TV movie, A Passion for Justice, starring Jane Seymour, was based on Brady's research into the life of Mississippi journalist and civil rights activist Hazel Brannon Smith. Her brief life of this figure appears in the collection Forgotten Heroes.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 8, 2012
Succinct and highly readable account of Tarbell's life. Well worth the time!
January 11, 2018
This account is a timely reminder of the struggles of the Progressive Era of 100+ years ago, as we re-fight the same old battles against income inequality and corporate greed. Ida Tarbell's work is particularly timely because the story she pursued, for which she is most remembered, also had to do with fossil fuels. It's a story I absorbed from a young age from my father's references to relatives who'd helped Mr. Rockefeller make his millions by digging his oil wells and building derricks in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania where he grew up. This book also is a reminder of the critical importance of investigative journalism. Tarbell was among those who pioneered this kind of reporting. Whatever struggles she went through as a woman seem largely hidden - maybe they were hidden even from herself - but the author gives us a sense of Tarbell as a person not without failings, but dogged in her pursuit of the truth. It's a story that should be better known.
August 8, 2016
A good biography of the first female investigative reporter. If she were living today, she would probably outshine most of her contemporary counterparts. I read her expose on John D. Rockefeller, Sr, some thirty years ago, and found it a blazing criticism of unchecked, unregulated capitalism.
January 21, 2010
She wrote an expose of the Standard Oil Company. Way ahead of her time.
November 28, 2018
The author rights in the notes at the end that "the real challenge was trying to explain an enigma".
The book was well researched but she seemed often to get lost in the detail and therefore make the subject even more enigmatic for the reader. Nevertheless, there is a lot of information in this book and I enjoyed reading it.
The book was well researched but she seemed often to get lost in the detail and therefore make the subject even more enigmatic for the reader. Nevertheless, there is a lot of information in this book and I enjoyed reading it.
October 3, 2016
I wanted to learn about the woman who exposed Standard Oil to greater scrutiny and paved the way for better regulation of the trusts. I was perplexed to also learn she was an anti-suffragist. Brady could have done a better job explaining this. Still, Tarbell lived during a pivotal time in US history and I did learn a lot about her and the times she lived in. Worthwhile read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews