Ida M. Tarbell: The Woman Who Challenged Big Business—and Won!

McCully creates a multilayered biography of Tarbell, crusading journalist of the early twentieth century. The author examines the era's social context for women as well as the culture and importance of print media, particularly the influence of magazines such as McClure's, where Ida made her mark. Just as her subject did, McCully allows readers to draw their own conclusions throughout. Source notes. Bib., ind.

McCully, best known for her picture books, here creates a multilayered cradle-to-grave biography of Ida M. Tarbell, the crusading journalist of the early twentieth century. Readers meet young Ida growing up in Pennsylvania oil country, a tarnished backwater of the Gilded Age. A curious child, Tarbell strove to become a botanist, and eventually a teacher, one of the few jobs open to women. Her teaching career was short-lived, but the lessons of scientific inquiry led to a dogged determination to get to the bottom of an issue, which would serve her well when she began her writing career. McCully re-creates the era's social context for women as well as the culture and importance of print media, particularly the influence of magazines such as McClure's, where Ida made her mark. Although known as a muckraker, Tarbell dismissed that label and insisted that she was a historian; the attention given here to her research and major works, particularly her expose of John D. Rockefeller, substantiate that idea. Famously, Ida Tarbell did not believe in women's suffrage, and McCully neither condemns nor excuses her for that position. Instead, she carefully details Tarbell's thinking on the issue and allows readers to draw their own conclusions. Here the work of the biographer mirrors the work of her subject. Source notes, bibliography, photo credits, and an index are included. betty carter