by Jim Patterson
In her new book, Cecelia Tichi, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English, argues that a new wave of muckrakers is reviving a tradition that stretches back to the early part of the 20th century.

Novelists like Upton Sinclair exposed societal ills with groundbreaking and popular books that fueled public furor and led to reforms in the early 1900s.

Tichi’s Exposes and Excess: Muckraking in America 1900/2000, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, makes the case that authors like Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) are firmly in Sinclair’s tradition.

“Individually, these books stir the minds and hearts of a nation in crisis,” Tichi said. “Collectively, they issue a wake-up call, a reveille for America that is reminiscent of another group of writers.”

Tichi also cites authors Naomi Klein (No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Job), Joseph Hallinan (Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation) and Laurie Garrett (Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health) as part of the new muckraking corps. She believes the public is receptive of their efforts, based on the books by Schlosser and Ehrenreich becoming best sellers.

During the so-called Gilded Age that spawned Sinclair’s The Jungle and books by Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens and others, the gap between wealthy and poor was widening, business scandals were commonplace and waves of layoffs squeezed the middle classes. Many politicians seemed blasé about the problems of the poor.

Tichi believes that those conditions have returned, and with them the muckrakers. She further explores whether muckraking can still be effective in an age where the book medium has been pushed aside by television and the Internet.

“Social change may proceed slower than wildfire,” Tichi says, “but signs indicate the work of these modern muckrakers is beginning to make a difference.”

Posted 12/11/03