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 fracture the giant monopoly into several corporations, one of which survives today as ExxonMobil.
"Kathleen Brady's triumphant portrait of Ida Tarbell will last for generations. No other biography of Ida Tarbell is likely to provide a more vivid look at this endlessly fascinating woman."
Doris Kearns Goodwin
"Kathleen Brady brings to life the personality of Ida Tarbell, queen of the muckrakers, who was one of the first women to break the gender gap in American journalism. . . . The biography is replete with revealing anecdotes."
