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Nader Crusader Spoiler Icon
By: Justin Martin
Posted December 22, 2003
thepeoplesvoice.org
Published by Basic Books, A
Member of the Perseus Book Group www.
Basicbooks.com (ISBN: 0-7382-0857-4) $17.95 US $26.00 CAN ”A
fine job of bringing Nader's impassioned, eccentric and notoriously private
life into full, three-dimensional view.”—Washington Post Book World
About
Nader
“The
consummate public figure, Nader has led and idiosyncratic private life. He
has never married or had children, asserting that his battles require total
commitment. He is a fierce proponent of openness on the part of government
and corporations—in fact, he is the primary architect of the Freedom of
Information Act. When it comes to his own life, however, Nader has
always been inordinately secretive...”—From the preface.
Either you love Ralph Nader, or you hate him. A polarizing figure if ever
there were one, his work as a consumer advocate and automobile-industry
critic has saved millions of dollars and millions of lives, yet his role as
a third-party candidate likely cost Al Gore the 2000 election. He has
inspired generations of reformers, yet he has infuriated—or at least
perplexed—almost everyone with whom he has ever worked. As a result, most
treatments of Nader have been either hagiographies or hatchet jobs. In NADER,
Justin Martin gives us a balanced account, based on extensive research and
access to Nader himself, as well as interviews with more than 300 people
including Nader's family and his closest associates and friends.
Reaction to Crashing the Party—Nader's own account of the 2000
election (not to be mistaken for a full autobiography)—was lukewarm at
best; many critics found it defensive and self-serving. Martin's book offers
a rigorously reported and unbiased view of the 2000 election not found in Crashing
the Party in addition to coverage of the sixty-six years of Nader's life
leading up to the race—years that took him from his boyhood home in
Connecticut, to Princeton, to Harvard Law, and on to Washington where he
remains one of the most influential public figures of our time.
Praise
for Nader
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Justin Martin’s judicious
biography underscores the dopiness of partisans, left and right, who
consider Nader a wrecking ball smashing American free enterprise.”—Boston
Globe
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”Will reward readers with
immediacy, vitality, wit and an evenhanded portrait.”—Library
Journal
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This is the most
authoritative biography to date of consumer movement leader and
political activist Ralph Nader…. It gives as full a portrait of Nader
as we are likely to get for some time,… Highly recommended.”—Choice
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”A welcome portrait, one
from which the famed gadfly’s admirers and foes alike have much to
learn.”—Kirkus Reviews
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”Clarif[ies] Nader's
status as one of the most influential Americans of the 20th century...
Those who see Nader as an icon will undoubtedly seek this out; even his
enemies might check it out, looking for clues to what makes him tick.”
—Publishers Weekly
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A
compelling account of the man for whom the title ‘consumer advocate’
was invented.”—Booklist
About the Author
Justin Martin is author of
best-selling Greenspan: The Man Behind Money. The paperback edition was
selected as a notable book for 2001 by The New York Times Book Review. He
has written work published in Fortune, New York News Day, Newsweek, Poet and
Writers and Worth. Martin is a 1987 graduate of Rice University in Houston,
Texas. He lives in York City with his wife and twin sons.
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