Author: Mary Jane Appel
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631496174
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 454
Book Description
Russell Lee, a contemporary of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, now emerges from the shadows as one of the most influential documentary photographers in American history. The most prolific photographer of the Great Depression, Russell Lee has never been canonized for his iconic images. With this compulsively readable and definitive biography, historian and archivist Mary Jane Appel finally uncovers Lee’s rebellious life, tracing his journey from blue-blood beginnings to intrepid years of activism and pioneering creativity, through the incredible body of work he left behind. Born in the quintessential turn-of-the-century small town of Ottawa, Illinois, in 1903, Lee grew up in a wealthy family riddled with tragedy. He trained in college to become a chemical engineer, but was quickly drawn to Greenwich Village, where he developed an interest in social change and the arts. In 1935, the charismatic bohemian picked up a camera and a year later walked into the office of Roy Stryker, head of the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration, later renamed the Farm Security Administration (FSA), setting in motion a new life trajectory. The Historical Section aimed to capture rural poverty and the New Deal programs designed to abolish it. But Stryker imagined a much broader pictorial sourcebook for America, and no one on his legendary team—including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Gordon Parks, among others—would be more dedicated to reaching this goal than Russell Lee. As Appel demonstrates, Stryker and Lee developed a fascinating symbiotic relationship that resulted in a massive and complex breadth of work. Living out of his car from the fall of 1936 to mid-1942, Lee crisscrossed America’s back roads more than any photographer of his era. During this time, he shot 19,000 negatives that were captioned and printed—more than twice that of any other FSA photographer. He captured arresting images of sweeping dust storms and devastating floods, and chronicled the World War II home front and the last gasp of a small-town America that was inexorably vanishing, all the while focusing prophetically on issues like segregation and climate change, decades before they became national concerns. Meticulously weaving previously unseen letters and diaries, Appel brilliantly reveals why Lee’s profile has remained obscured, while his contemporaries became broadly celebrated. With more than 100 images spread throughout, Russell Lee speaks not only to the complexity of a pioneering documentary photographer’s work but to a seminal American moment captured viscerally like never before.
Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy
Author: Mary Jane Appel
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631496174
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 454
Book Description
Russell Lee, a contemporary of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, now emerges from the shadows as one of the most influential documentary photographers in American history. The most prolific photographer of the Great Depression, Russell Lee has never been canonized for his iconic images. With this compulsively readable and definitive biography, historian and archivist Mary Jane Appel finally uncovers Lee’s rebellious life, tracing his journey from blue-blood beginnings to intrepid years of activism and pioneering creativity, through the incredible body of work he left behind. Born in the quintessential turn-of-the-century small town of Ottawa, Illinois, in 1903, Lee grew up in a wealthy family riddled with tragedy. He trained in college to become a chemical engineer, but was quickly drawn to Greenwich Village, where he developed an interest in social change and the arts. In 1935, the charismatic bohemian picked up a camera and a year later walked into the office of Roy Stryker, head of the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration, later renamed the Farm Security Administration (FSA), setting in motion a new life trajectory. The Historical Section aimed to capture rural poverty and the New Deal programs designed to abolish it. But Stryker imagined a much broader pictorial sourcebook for America, and no one on his legendary team—including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Gordon Parks, among others—would be more dedicated to reaching this goal than Russell Lee. As Appel demonstrates, Stryker and Lee developed a fascinating symbiotic relationship that resulted in a massive and complex breadth of work. Living out of his car from the fall of 1936 to mid-1942, Lee crisscrossed America’s back roads more than any photographer of his era. During this time, he shot 19,000 negatives that were captioned and printed—more than twice that of any other FSA photographer. He captured arresting images of sweeping dust storms and devastating floods, and chronicled the World War II home front and the last gasp of a small-town America that was inexorably vanishing, all the while focusing prophetically on issues like segregation and climate change, decades before they became national concerns. Meticulously weaving previously unseen letters and diaries, Appel brilliantly reveals why Lee’s profile has remained obscured, while his contemporaries became broadly celebrated. With more than 100 images spread throughout, Russell Lee speaks not only to the complexity of a pioneering documentary photographer’s work but to a seminal American moment captured viscerally like never before.
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631496174
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 454
Book Description
Russell Lee, a contemporary of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, now emerges from the shadows as one of the most influential documentary photographers in American history. The most prolific photographer of the Great Depression, Russell Lee has never been canonized for his iconic images. With this compulsively readable and definitive biography, historian and archivist Mary Jane Appel finally uncovers Lee’s rebellious life, tracing his journey from blue-blood beginnings to intrepid years of activism and pioneering creativity, through the incredible body of work he left behind. Born in the quintessential turn-of-the-century small town of Ottawa, Illinois, in 1903, Lee grew up in a wealthy family riddled with tragedy. He trained in college to become a chemical engineer, but was quickly drawn to Greenwich Village, where he developed an interest in social change and the arts. In 1935, the charismatic bohemian picked up a camera and a year later walked into the office of Roy Stryker, head of the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration, later renamed the Farm Security Administration (FSA), setting in motion a new life trajectory. The Historical Section aimed to capture rural poverty and the New Deal programs designed to abolish it. But Stryker imagined a much broader pictorial sourcebook for America, and no one on his legendary team—including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Gordon Parks, among others—would be more dedicated to reaching this goal than Russell Lee. As Appel demonstrates, Stryker and Lee developed a fascinating symbiotic relationship that resulted in a massive and complex breadth of work. Living out of his car from the fall of 1936 to mid-1942, Lee crisscrossed America’s back roads more than any photographer of his era. During this time, he shot 19,000 negatives that were captioned and printed—more than twice that of any other FSA photographer. He captured arresting images of sweeping dust storms and devastating floods, and chronicled the World War II home front and the last gasp of a small-town America that was inexorably vanishing, all the while focusing prophetically on issues like segregation and climate change, decades before they became national concerns. Meticulously weaving previously unseen letters and diaries, Appel brilliantly reveals why Lee’s profile has remained obscured, while his contemporaries became broadly celebrated. With more than 100 images spread throughout, Russell Lee speaks not only to the complexity of a pioneering documentary photographer’s work but to a seminal American moment captured viscerally like never before.
Russell Lee Photographs
Author:
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 9780292714991
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Russell Lee is widely acclaimed as one of the most outstanding documentary photographers of the twentieth century. His images of American life during the Great Depression, created for the Farm Security Administration between 1936 and 1942, hold a preeminent place in one of history's best-known and most useful photographic collections. This famous body of work demonstrates Lee's extraordinary ability to reveal the humanity of his subjects and to become a part of the communities he photographed. It also displays Lee's superior technical ability—his legendary skill in using a flash enabled Lee to create some of the finest candids in the history of photography. Russell Lee Photographs is the first book to show the full range and quality of Lee's entire oeuvre beyond the FSA work, as well as the first major publication of his photographs since F. Jack Hurley's 1978 book, Russell Lee: Photographer (long out of print). The book contains over 140 images, 101 of which have never appeared in book publication. The photographs are grouped into suites of images that represent all of Lee's important, non-FSA subjects: early work from New York City and Woodstock; the Spanish-speaking people of Texas; the mentally and physically disabled; political campaigns, including the Kennedy-Johnson campaign of 1960; commercial work for chemical and other companies; a portfolio of images of Italy; and quintessential scenes of small-town life. Setting Lee's images in context are a foreword by John Szarkowski, one of America's leading photography curators and critics, and an introduction by Lee's friend and fellow photography educator J. B. Colson, who offers fascinating personal insights into Lee's life and career. Considering Russell Lee's stature in American photography, it is surprising that much of his post-FSA work is unknown to the public and has been seldom seen even in the photography community. By making these images readily available for the first time, this book gives long-overdue recognition to the full range and excellence of Lee's work. Russell Lee Photographs is the essential book on this major American photographer.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 9780292714991
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Russell Lee is widely acclaimed as one of the most outstanding documentary photographers of the twentieth century. His images of American life during the Great Depression, created for the Farm Security Administration between 1936 and 1942, hold a preeminent place in one of history's best-known and most useful photographic collections. This famous body of work demonstrates Lee's extraordinary ability to reveal the humanity of his subjects and to become a part of the communities he photographed. It also displays Lee's superior technical ability—his legendary skill in using a flash enabled Lee to create some of the finest candids in the history of photography. Russell Lee Photographs is the first book to show the full range and quality of Lee's entire oeuvre beyond the FSA work, as well as the first major publication of his photographs since F. Jack Hurley's 1978 book, Russell Lee: Photographer (long out of print). The book contains over 140 images, 101 of which have never appeared in book publication. The photographs are grouped into suites of images that represent all of Lee's important, non-FSA subjects: early work from New York City and Woodstock; the Spanish-speaking people of Texas; the mentally and physically disabled; political campaigns, including the Kennedy-Johnson campaign of 1960; commercial work for chemical and other companies; a portfolio of images of Italy; and quintessential scenes of small-town life. Setting Lee's images in context are a foreword by John Szarkowski, one of America's leading photography curators and critics, and an introduction by Lee's friend and fellow photography educator J. B. Colson, who offers fascinating personal insights into Lee's life and career. Considering Russell Lee's stature in American photography, it is surprising that much of his post-FSA work is unknown to the public and has been seldom seen even in the photography community. By making these images readily available for the first time, this book gives long-overdue recognition to the full range and excellence of Lee's work. Russell Lee Photographs is the essential book on this major American photographer.
Russell Lee, Photographer
Author: Russell Lee
Publisher: Morgan & Morgan, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Documentary photography
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
A brief biography of the photographer followed by his photographs of people and places.
Publisher: Morgan & Morgan, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Documentary photography
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
A brief biography of the photographer followed by his photographs of people and places.
The Photographs of Marion Post Wolcott
Author: Marion Post Wolcott
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Documentary photography
Languages : en
Pages : 68
Book Description
"The approximately 172,000 film negatives and transparencies in the Library of Congress's collection from the Farm Security Administration (FSA), later the Office of War Information (OWI), provide a unique view of American life during the Great Depression and World War II. This government photography project, headed by Roy E. Stryker, employed many relatively unknown names who later became some of the twentieth-century's best-known photographers, such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, and Carl Mydans. Initially conceived to document government loans to farmers and their subsequent resettlement in suburban communities, the project expanded to create a visual record of agricultural workers across the United States. Later, Stryker's photographers recorded both rural and urban centers as the nation prepared for World War II. Each volume in the Fields of Vision series features an introduction to the work of a single FSA photographer by a leading contemporary author or writer, and presents fifty striking images that show how the particular vision of these photographers helped shape the collective identity of America. Their evocative pictures transport the viewer to American homes, farms, and streets of the 1930s and 1940s, while offering a glimpse of a new narrative and intimate style that was later to blossom on the pages of Look and Life magazines. For many Americans of the pre-television age, the diversity and complexity of their country was defined by the lenses of these men and women. This volume focuses on the photographs of Marion Post Wolcott"--
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Documentary photography
Languages : en
Pages : 68
Book Description
"The approximately 172,000 film negatives and transparencies in the Library of Congress's collection from the Farm Security Administration (FSA), later the Office of War Information (OWI), provide a unique view of American life during the Great Depression and World War II. This government photography project, headed by Roy E. Stryker, employed many relatively unknown names who later became some of the twentieth-century's best-known photographers, such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, and Carl Mydans. Initially conceived to document government loans to farmers and their subsequent resettlement in suburban communities, the project expanded to create a visual record of agricultural workers across the United States. Later, Stryker's photographers recorded both rural and urban centers as the nation prepared for World War II. Each volume in the Fields of Vision series features an introduction to the work of a single FSA photographer by a leading contemporary author or writer, and presents fifty striking images that show how the particular vision of these photographers helped shape the collective identity of America. Their evocative pictures transport the viewer to American homes, farms, and streets of the 1930s and 1940s, while offering a glimpse of a new narrative and intimate style that was later to blossom on the pages of Look and Life magazines. For many Americans of the pre-television age, the diversity and complexity of their country was defined by the lenses of these men and women. This volume focuses on the photographs of Marion Post Wolcott"--
American Coal
Author: Mary Jane Appel
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 147732965X
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 176
Book Description
More than 100 powerful images by noted photographer Russell Lee that document the working conditions and lives of coal mining communities in the postwar United States; publication coincides with an exhibition at the National Archives in Washington, DC. In 1946 the Truman administration made a promise to striking coal miners: as part of a deal to resume work, the government would sponsor a nationwide survey of health and labor conditions in mining camps. One instrumental member of the survey team was photographer Russell Lee. Lee had made his name during the Depression, when, alongside Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, he used his camera to document agrarian life for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Now he trained his lens on miners and their families to show their difficult circumstances despite their essential contributions to the nation's first wave of postwar growth. American Coal draws from the thousands of photographs that Lee made for the survey—also on view in the US National Archives and Records Administration’s exhibition Power & Light—and includes his original, detailed captions as well as an essay by biographer Mary Jane Appel and historian Douglas Brinkley. They place his work in context and illuminate how Lee helped win improved conditions for his subjects through vivid images that captured an array of miners and their communities at work and at play, at church and in school, in moments of joy and struggle, ultimately revealing to their fellow Americans the humanity and resilience of these underrecognized workers.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 147732965X
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 176
Book Description
More than 100 powerful images by noted photographer Russell Lee that document the working conditions and lives of coal mining communities in the postwar United States; publication coincides with an exhibition at the National Archives in Washington, DC. In 1946 the Truman administration made a promise to striking coal miners: as part of a deal to resume work, the government would sponsor a nationwide survey of health and labor conditions in mining camps. One instrumental member of the survey team was photographer Russell Lee. Lee had made his name during the Depression, when, alongside Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, he used his camera to document agrarian life for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Now he trained his lens on miners and their families to show their difficult circumstances despite their essential contributions to the nation's first wave of postwar growth. American Coal draws from the thousands of photographs that Lee made for the survey—also on view in the US National Archives and Records Administration’s exhibition Power & Light—and includes his original, detailed captions as well as an essay by biographer Mary Jane Appel and historian Douglas Brinkley. They place his work in context and illuminate how Lee helped win improved conditions for his subjects through vivid images that captured an array of miners and their communities at work and at play, at church and in school, in moments of joy and struggle, ultimately revealing to their fellow Americans the humanity and resilience of these underrecognized workers.
Glitch Feminism
Author: Legacy Russell
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786632683
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 140
Book Description
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity? The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Timely and provocative, Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786632683
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 140
Book Description
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity? The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Timely and provocative, Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.
A Vision Shared
Author: Hank O'Neal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783958291812
Category : Depressions
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
Featuring the indelible work of the eleven photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration ? perhaps the finest photographic team assembled in the twentieth century ? A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and Its People 1935?1943 was published in 1976 to great acclaim, and was named one of the hundred most important books of the decade by the Association of American Publishers. John Collier, Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Theo Jung, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, John Vachon and Marion Post Wolcott were invited by Hank O?Neal to choose the best of their own work, and provide commentary.0For the fortieth anniversary edition of this remarkable volume, all of the photographs, text and historical material that made up the original edition have been carefully reproduced, followed by a new afterword by O?Neal detailing the events that followed the book?s initial release.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783958291812
Category : Depressions
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
Featuring the indelible work of the eleven photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration ? perhaps the finest photographic team assembled in the twentieth century ? A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and Its People 1935?1943 was published in 1976 to great acclaim, and was named one of the hundred most important books of the decade by the Association of American Publishers. John Collier, Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Theo Jung, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, John Vachon and Marion Post Wolcott were invited by Hank O?Neal to choose the best of their own work, and provide commentary.0For the fortieth anniversary edition of this remarkable volume, all of the photographs, text and historical material that made up the original edition have been carefully reproduced, followed by a new afterword by O?Neal detailing the events that followed the book?s initial release.
Picturing a Nation: The Great Depression’s Finest Photographers Introduce America to Itself
Author: Martin W. Sandler
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 1536222593
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Book Description
A National Book Award winner mines photographic gold to show—and tell—the story of the Great Depression. In an exquisitely curated volume of 140 full-color and black-and-white photographs, Martin W. Sandler unpacks the United States Farm Security Administration’s sweeping visual record of the Great Depression. In 1935, with the nation bent under unprecedented unemployment and economic hardship, the FSA sent ten photographers, including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks, on the road trip of a lifetime. The images they logged revealed the daily lives of Southern sharecroppers, Dust Bowl farmers in the Midwest, Western migrant workers, and families scraping by in Northeast cities. Using their cameras as weapons against poverty and racism—and in service of hope, courage, and human dignity—these talented photographers created not only a collective work of art, but a national treasure. Grouped into four geographical regions and locked in focus by rich historical commentary, these images—many now iconic—are history at its most powerful and immediate. Extensive back matter includes photographer profiles and a bibliography.
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 1536222593
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Book Description
A National Book Award winner mines photographic gold to show—and tell—the story of the Great Depression. In an exquisitely curated volume of 140 full-color and black-and-white photographs, Martin W. Sandler unpacks the United States Farm Security Administration’s sweeping visual record of the Great Depression. In 1935, with the nation bent under unprecedented unemployment and economic hardship, the FSA sent ten photographers, including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks, on the road trip of a lifetime. The images they logged revealed the daily lives of Southern sharecroppers, Dust Bowl farmers in the Midwest, Western migrant workers, and families scraping by in Northeast cities. Using their cameras as weapons against poverty and racism—and in service of hope, courage, and human dignity—these talented photographers created not only a collective work of art, but a national treasure. Grouped into four geographical regions and locked in focus by rich historical commentary, these images—many now iconic—are history at its most powerful and immediate. Extensive back matter includes photographer profiles and a bibliography.
Light and Air
Author: Jerry W. Cotten
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469634058
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
A trailblazer for women photographers in the South, North Carolina's Bayard Wootten (1875-1959) overcame economic hardship, gender discrimination, and the obscurity of a small-town upbringing to become the state's most significant early female photographer. This advocate of equality for women combined an artistic vision of photography with determination and a love of adventure to forge a distinguished career spanning half a century. Originally trained as an artist, Wootten worked in photography's pictorial tradition, emphasizing artistic effect in her images at a time when realistic and documentary photography increasingly dominated the medium. Traveling throughout North Carolina and surrounding states, she turned the artistry of her eye and lens on the people and places she encountered. Having opened a studio in her hometown of New Bern in 1905, Wootten moved to Chapel Hill in 1928, where her clients included the University of North Carolina. Between 1932 and 1941, she also provided photographs for six books--including Cabins in the Laurel, Old Homes and Gardens of North Carolina, and Charleston: Azaleas and Old Bricks--lectured extensively, and exhibited her photographs as far away as New York and Massachusetts. Light and Air features 190 illustrations, including 136 duotone reproductions of Wootten's photographs taken in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee--many of which have never before been published. Though she was an accomplished landscape and architectural photographer, some of Wootten's most notable images were the portraits she crafted of black and white Americans in the lower reaches of society, working people whom other photographers often ignored. These images are perhaps her most enduring legacy.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469634058
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
A trailblazer for women photographers in the South, North Carolina's Bayard Wootten (1875-1959) overcame economic hardship, gender discrimination, and the obscurity of a small-town upbringing to become the state's most significant early female photographer. This advocate of equality for women combined an artistic vision of photography with determination and a love of adventure to forge a distinguished career spanning half a century. Originally trained as an artist, Wootten worked in photography's pictorial tradition, emphasizing artistic effect in her images at a time when realistic and documentary photography increasingly dominated the medium. Traveling throughout North Carolina and surrounding states, she turned the artistry of her eye and lens on the people and places she encountered. Having opened a studio in her hometown of New Bern in 1905, Wootten moved to Chapel Hill in 1928, where her clients included the University of North Carolina. Between 1932 and 1941, she also provided photographs for six books--including Cabins in the Laurel, Old Homes and Gardens of North Carolina, and Charleston: Azaleas and Old Bricks--lectured extensively, and exhibited her photographs as far away as New York and Massachusetts. Light and Air features 190 illustrations, including 136 duotone reproductions of Wootten's photographs taken in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee--many of which have never before been published. Though she was an accomplished landscape and architectural photographer, some of Wootten's most notable images were the portraits she crafted of black and white Americans in the lower reaches of society, working people whom other photographers often ignored. These images are perhaps her most enduring legacy.
Upton Sinclair
Author: Lauren Coodley
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803248431
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
Had Upton Sinclair not written a single book after The Jungle, he would still be famous. But Sinclair was a mere twenty-five years old when he wrote The Jungle, and over the next sixty-five years he wrote nearly eighty more books and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was also a filmmaker, labor activist, women’s rights advocate, and health pioneer on a grand scale. This new biography of Sinclair underscores his place in the American story as a social, political, and cultural force, a man who more than any other disrupted and documented his era in the name of social justice. Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual shows us Sinclair engaged in one cause after another, some surprisingly relevant today—the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, the depredations of the oil industry, the wrongful imprisonment of the Wobblies, and the perils of unchecked capitalism and concentrated media. Throughout, Lauren Coodley provides a new perspective for looking at Sinclair’s prodigiously productive life. Coodley’s book reveals a consistent streak of feminism, both in Sinclair’s relationships with women—wives, friends, and activists—and in his interest in issues of housework and childcare, temperance and diet. This biography will forever alter our picture of this complicated, unconventional, often controversial man whose whole life was dedicated to helping people understand how society was run, by whom, and for whom.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803248431
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
Had Upton Sinclair not written a single book after The Jungle, he would still be famous. But Sinclair was a mere twenty-five years old when he wrote The Jungle, and over the next sixty-five years he wrote nearly eighty more books and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was also a filmmaker, labor activist, women’s rights advocate, and health pioneer on a grand scale. This new biography of Sinclair underscores his place in the American story as a social, political, and cultural force, a man who more than any other disrupted and documented his era in the name of social justice. Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual shows us Sinclair engaged in one cause after another, some surprisingly relevant today—the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, the depredations of the oil industry, the wrongful imprisonment of the Wobblies, and the perils of unchecked capitalism and concentrated media. Throughout, Lauren Coodley provides a new perspective for looking at Sinclair’s prodigiously productive life. Coodley’s book reveals a consistent streak of feminism, both in Sinclair’s relationships with women—wives, friends, and activists—and in his interest in issues of housework and childcare, temperance and diet. This biography will forever alter our picture of this complicated, unconventional, often controversial man whose whole life was dedicated to helping people understand how society was run, by whom, and for whom.