Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857 – January 6, 1944) was an American teacher, author and journalist. She was known as one of the leading "muckrakers" of her day, work known in modern times in the progressive era as "investigative journalism." She wrote many notable magazine series and biographies. She is best-known for her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company, which is 654 pages long and was listed as number five in a 1999 list b...
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Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857 – January 6, 1944) was an American teacher, author and journalist. She was known as one of the leading "muckrakers" of her day, work known in modern times in the progressive era as "investigative journalism." She wrote many notable magazine series and biographies. She is best-known for her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company, which is 654 pages long and was listed as number five in a 1999 list by the New York Times of the top 100 works of twentieth-century American journalism. She began her work on The Standard after her editors at McClure's Magazine called for a story on one of The Trusts. She thought the public would be bored by the story of the oil regions, even though its head John D. Rockefeller, Sr. had bankrupted her father.
Tarbell was born in Hatch Hollow in Erie County, Pennsylvania on November 5, 1857. The log cabin she was born in was the home of her maternal grandfather, Walter Raleigh McCullough, a pioneer. She grew...
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