Citizen reporters S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the magazine that rewrote America

Popular magazines in America's Gilded Age conducting socially progressive, in-depth investigations so enraged President Theodore Roosevelt that he infamously condemned even the most diligent journalists as muckrakers. He was particularly outraged by McClure's, the brainchild of ambitious, visionary, and increasingly erratic Irish immigrant Samuel Sidney McClure. The influential magazine thrived in large part due to the grit and genius of writer and pioneering journalist Ida Tarbell, who came of age, studious and headstrong, in the Allegheny River Valley. In her finely sourced and lively first book, Gorton tells the complex, entwined stories of these two ardent innovators and their temperamental differences, symbiotic friendship, and reverberating achievements. Productively charming and disastrously chaotic, McClure had his finger on the public's pulse and a keen eye for talent. Steadfast Tarbell rejected society's shackling gender restrictions to embrace meaningful work, becoming the lifeblood of McClure's via such courageous and meticulous works as her resounding exposé of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Including incisive portraits of other McClure's journalists, Gorton's fresh and vivid biographical history ultimately affirms the essential role an independent press of conscience plays in our democracy.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2020 Booklist

Socially conscious journalism and colorful personalities stimulate each other in this meandering portrait of a Progressive Era magazine. Journalist Gorton recounts the heyday of McClure's (roughly 1893 to 1906), which gained a then-massive circulation exceeding 400,000 for its fiction by legends including Willa Cather and Robert Louis Stevenson and its investigative reporting on strikes, business monopolies, racial lynchings, municipal corruption, and other controversies. President Theodore Roosevelt celebrated the magazine's reformist zeal, then denounced its "muckraking" after the magazine's reporting made trouble for him. Gorton's narrative revolves around biographies of Ida Tarbell, a pioneering female journalist whose sensational exposé of Standard Oil sparked antitrust action, and founder Samuel Sidney McClure, a brilliant manic-depressive with a gift for spotting great writers and sowing chaos with grandiose schemes. (McClure's was crippled when a plan to start a second publication--and perhaps an insurance company, bank, mail-order university, and company town to boot--provoked mass resignations.) Gorton wants to capture an evanescent group alchemy of journalism at McClure's, with McClure inspiring and supporting Tarbell's investigations and Tarbell stabilizing the erratic McClure, but her case for a unique McClure's culture that wouldn't flourish under steadier management is unconvincing. The result is a miscellany of profiles and anecdotes, some more revealing than others, without a unifying theme. (Feb.)

Consummate examples of groundbreaking investigative journalism include Upton Sinclair's muckraking, which exposed the poor working conditions of Chicago's meat-packing industry, and Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's sleuthing, toppled the Nixon administration after the Watergate break-in. Yet as freelance writer Gorton reveals, McClure's magazine (1893--1931) was instrumental in paving the way for reporters to battle corruption and drive change in society. Assembling a crack team of writers, including most notably Ida Tarbell, who took down the Standard Oil monopoly; Ray Stannard Baker; Lincoln Steffens; and Willa Cather; the charismatic S.S. McClure designed a model general-interest publication of the Progressive Era featuring in-depth, biographical sketches of historical figures, of-the-moment newsworthy pieces, and literary works from luminaries such as Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Key to the magazine's ultimate success, suggests Gorton, was McClure's lively, temperamental personality and determination to position the magazine as a "cultural force." VERDICT Readers interested in Gilded Age history and its parallels to contemporary society will enjoy learning about this trailblazing publication.--Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

A history of McClure's magazine, its publisher, and its most important contributor.While employed on the editorial side of magazines and book publishing, Gorton began wondering about the motivations and interpersonal dynamics of writers and editors. When she discovered a century-old professional relationship between magazine publisher Samuel Sidney McClure and his star writer, Ida Minerva Tarbell, she began to conduct research for this book. Both born in 1857, McClure and Tarbell met in 1892 as he sought to hire her for the editorial staff of his nascent, eponymous monthly magazine. That magazine would become hugely successful from 1893 until about 1906, when internal and external forces caused a decline, leading to eventual closure. In Gorton's wide-ranging book, the magazine does not make its debut until nearly 100 pages in. Before that, the author lays out a dual biography, alternating chapters between the two outsized personalities. While McClure was restless, Tarbell was steadier in nature. Gorton conducted primary documents research in archives filled with papers from McClure (mostly in Indiana) and Tarbell (mostly in Pennsylvania). The author also cites liberally from a previous McClure biography as well as two previous Tarbell biographies and her memoir, All in a Day's Work, originally published in 1939. Tarbell's fame rests largely on her accomplishments as a muckraking woman journalist in the male-dominated industry while McClure was well known for his ability to lead "by enthusiasm, rather than by example." The best-known contentan expos of Standard Oil Company and John D. Rockefeller researched and written by Tarbellappeared in installments published between 1902 and 1904 and was later published in 1904 as The History of the Standard Oil Company. Though Gorton offers a sturdy portrait of Tarbell and McClure for a new generation of readers, much of the information she provides has already appeared in previous books and historical journals. The author variously refers to Tarbell as "Miss Tarbell," "Ida Tarbell," or simply "Ida," which becomes distracting.An adequate resource for readers new to this piece of the history of American journalism. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.