Perseus Academic: Shaking the Foundations by Bruce Shapiro

The ink had barely dried on the First Amendment when American journalists invented an unprecedented tradition of inquiry and expose. Shaking the Foundations is the first book to bring together the writing of two centuries of reporters who brought down Presidents and corporations, challenged the logic of wars and freed the innocent. Shaking the Foundations chronicles the great debates of American history: Jim Crow and financial trusts, migrant labor and environmental destruction, witch hunts and government corruption. As journalism, these unabridged dispatches—many never before available in book form—offer inspiration for today's muckrakers, combining the thrill of the chase with a burning sense of outrage. For the general reader, Shaking the Foundations presents compelling true-life tales of scandal, cover-up and murder, and of reporters who tenaciously fought for the truth. Shaking the Foundations establishes investigative journalism as an essential force in American politics and the history of our democracy.

Contributors include: Henry Adams on the Erie Railroad, Nelly Bly on the New York Insane Asylum, Rachel Carson on pesticides, Vera Connelly on Native American reservations, Marvel Cooke on the Bronx Slave Market, Mark Dowie and Barbara Ehrenreich on the corporate crime of the century, Stetson Kennedy on the Ku Klux Klan, Jonathan Kwitney on the mafia.

Bruce Shapiro is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author of Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future, with Rev. Jesse Jackson and Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. He teaches investigative journalism at Yale University and is field director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Pete Hamill has worked as a columnist for the New York Post, the New York Daily News and Newsday and his work has appeared in many other publications, including Esquire and New York magazine. He is the recipient of many journalistic awards and the author of the best-selling Snow in August, A Drinking Life and Forever.

Bruce Shapiro is an associate editor of The Nation and teaches investigative journalism at Yale University.