home

This book summarizes many major muckrakers of the 20th century. it tells you a little about each person, and then tells you about their most famous book or piece of w﻿riting.
 * __Plot ﻿ __**

The author isnt trying to uncover any specific. The author is trying to show us all the things that past muckrakers have revealed about several different issues. Jensen out together several shorter stories about people who uncovered information about birth control, the oil industries, and all the things people didn't want to know about major cities.
 * __Author's Goal __**

 __ Ida Mae Tarbell- __ Prediction: Ida Mae Tarbell is going to unover informatn about Rockefeller that he doesnt want people to know Analysis: Ida Mae Tarbell was a writer for McClure's. She wrote about the oil company and Rockefeller. She was letting everyone know what was going on during the 2nd industrial revolution. She was also an anti-suffragette. __ Licoln Steffens __ - Prediction: Licoln Steffens is going to write about a bunch of different cities, and tell people hidden information about each one of them. Analysis: Licoln Steffens is reffered to as the "King of Muckrackers." He was sent to military school for dinking as a teenager. Later, he went yo Europe to search for scientifc explination of ethics. His dad cutt him off from all financial support, so he got a job as a reporter. He wrote //The Shame of States//, which was a book filled with negative issues, ideas, and concepts in different states and major cities. __ Upton Sinclair __ - Prediction: Upton Sinclair is going to write a book about all the bad things about stockyard workers. Analysis: Upton Sinclair was a failed poet. As a result, he became a muckracker. He went undercover to find out about stockyard workers. //The Jungle// was rejected 5 times before he decided to self-publish the book. The book brough him about $4000 in about 1-2 months. The publishing if his book caused a big uproar and many people wanted to censor or stop his book from being in reach of the public. __Margaret Sanger__- Prediction: Margaret Sanger is going to get, and share, a bunch of information about birth control that the government doesn't want the public to know. Analysis: Margaret Sanger was the 6th child out of 11. Her mother died at a young age, probably due to all of her pregnancies. Margaret was determined to find out more about birth control so that woman nationwide could have the ability to reach it if they wanted to. She went to Europe to learn more about it because they didn;t have as many restrictions on birth control as we did. When Margaret returned to the US, she made a magazine with all the information she had gotten. She was imprissoned 8 times for what she did and tried to do. __George Seldes__- Prediction:George Seldes is going to interview a lot of famous/well known people and he's going to get unknown information from them and then release it to the public. Analysis: George Seldes dropped out of highschool after his junior year. He became a full time journalist and he ended up interviewing Hindenburg, Hindenburg admitted to being beaten in WWII. Seldes foucused a lot on censorship. he was one of the first people ever to criticize the censorship connected to tobacco. He wrote more than 20 books about major historical events and media. He always journaled straight from the source and carried out more than 800 interviews before he died at age 104. __ John Steinbeck __ - Prediction: He journaled about the poorest people in America to reveal to the public what some people are living through and are really like. Analysis: Both of John Steinbecks parents wanted him to be a writer. He was a good all around student in school, and was the president of his senior class. Steinbeck went to Stanford, but he skipped classes to write, failed classes, and eventually dropped out. He was gone from Stanford for a couple years, and then returned in 1923; majored in journalism. He wrote //The Grapes of Wrath,// which is a book he wrote about the hundereds of thousands of homeless immigrants. __ J. William Fulbright __ - Prediction: Most peple don't think he knows what he's talking about. But, he's going to write something something that everybody thinks is wrong...and he'll end up bring completely right. Analysis: J. William Fulbright attended the Universit of Arkansas and was an 'all-American' with a straight B+ average. He became the UA president at the age 34, bu was fired 2 years ater. Fulbright was opposed to McCarthy, and he spoke out against him and brought McCarthy down. He became the Democrats leading spokesman on international issues. //Pentagon Propoganda Machine// exposed the use of taxes to support an already large military budget, __Rachel Carson__- Prediction: Rachel Carson is going to be an environmental activist and tell people what needs to be done about the environment to help save and preserve it. Analysis: Rachel Carson was tought about and around nature ever since she was a little kid. She started writting stories as soon as she learned to write. She studied zooloy and became a biology teacher. Carson was also an accomplished nonfiction writer. Her book //Silent Spring// was published in 1962 and she died in 1964. Her book was mainly about her outrage and anger against pesticides. She started a worldwide environmental revolution. __ I.F. Stone __ - Prediction: I.F. Stone is going to be a threat to the public and other reporters for getting some kind of important information Analysis: I.F. Stone was destined to be a writer. He worked as a reporter and editorial writer fro several liberal newspapers from 1927-1953. Stone also wrote a good number of books about national and international issues. He was a "skilled, informed, and provocative" journalist. Stone tried to get into a newspaper, but all were full and didn't have room for him. So, he started his own paper instead. This paper talked about the promotion of civil rights, the Vietnam War, and many other national and international issues. When Stone's paper shut down in 1971, he decided to travel the world and lecture about civil rights, peace, and economic justice. __Edward R. Murrow__- Prediction: Edward R. Murrow is going to tell people what's really going on with WWII Analysis: Edward R. Murrow's high school and college career extracurriculars centered mostly around politics and theater. He was elected the President of NSFA (National Student Federation of America) as a senior at Wshaington State. In 1932, he left NSFA and joined the Institute of International Education (IIE). He later joined CBS as a Director of Talks and stayed there for most of his career. He went to Europe to broadcast about the war and returned to America in 1945. Then in 1947 he had his own evenng talk show/news show on CBS where he would talk about WWII and covered the Korean War. __Jessica Mitford__- Prediction: Jessica Mitford is going to leave her royal life behind and try to make a difference in many aspects of society and tell people what they should really know. Analysis: When Mitford was 12, she decided she was going to run away from her royal life and help the people in poverty. When she turned 19, she used money she had saved up, and left London to go to France to meet her second cousin Esmond Romilly, and were arried in 1937. They moved back to England, but where dissapointed in Hitler's succes. So they went to the United States. In 1941, Romilly was killed in action flying over the Atlantic after joining the Royal Candian Airforce at age 23. Mitford wrote //Daughters and Rebels// and was published in 1960. It was based off the letters she got from Romilly during the war, and it turned into an autobiography. It exposed what the war was really like, and what it was like to be a certain part of it. She also wrote //The American Way of Death,// wich talked about the American funeral industries.
 * __Analysis/Prediction __**

Carl Jensen didn't uncover information himself. He told about muckrakers from the 20th century and what they uncovered. Information from the Rockefeller oil indusrty to burth control was uncovered in this book.
 * __Muckracking Theme Co____nnection__ **