The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (California Legacy Book) Review
The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (California Legacy Book) Feature
Here is the autobiography of one of the world’s first celebrity journalists: Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936), a man whose writing was so notorious that President Theodore Roosevelt coined a term for it—muckraking.
Growing up in 1870s Sacramento, Steffens studied at Berkeley and in Europe before taking a position at the New York Evening Post, and later at McClure’s Magazine. His crusade to expose corruption took him all over the nation and on to Mexico, Europe, and the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, where he made his famous proclamation, "I have seen the future, and it works!" Eventually he became disenchanted with communism, and in his later years he returned to California, to feel again its "warm, colorful force of beauty" and to write what would become a best-selling memoir.
The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens is the story of a cranky and brilliant reporter with a passion for examining the complex and contradictory conditions that breed corruption, poverty, and misery. As such, this book is an antidote to the spin doctors, pundits, and talking heads who discourage us from ever reading past a headline or challenging the status quo. Lincoln Steffens is an inspiration to all socially engaged citizens today.
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