All in the Day's Work

"In this frank and informative autobiography, the veteran investigative journalist Ida M. Tarbell looks back on her nearly fifty-year career. At the age of eighty-two, one of the original muckrakers writes with characteristic candor and intelligence about a life spent defying categories and challenging complacency. Robert C. Kochersberger's introduction gives an overview of Tarbell's life and work, including achievements she omitted from her memoir out of modesty, and examines her enduring value to journalists of the twenty-first century." "Tarbell was the only woman in her class of forty students at Allegheny College. Shortly after graduation she took a job at The Chautauquan, beginning a lifelong immersion in the world of journalism. But it was at McClure's magazine - where she was the only woman on staff - that Tarbell made her name as a determined journalist, one of the fearless brigade of truth seekers famously chastised by Theodore Roosevelt, who used the term "muckraker" to discredit those who attacked U.S. senators in print. Tarbell also wrote serialized biographies of Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln, as well as a landmark series of articles on Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller." "In All in the Day's Work, Tarbell turns her keen eye on herself, recalling the events of her fascinating life with the same honesty, verve, and attention to detail she brought to her journalistic work, offering insight along the way into the people, places, and issues of her time."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.