I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens Review

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(More customer reviews)He was the son of a self-made California businessman who often made profits betting on "fixed" horse races. Lincoln Steffens grew up privileged in a large, happy well-fixed Republican family, which he remained emotionally close to for the rest of his life. After a three year stint in Europe during which he studied at the Sorbonne and Leipzig University, Steffens was shocked to receive a $100 bill from his impatient father instructing him to immediately go to New York and do something "practical" with his life.
But his father also supplied a letter of introduction that helped his son land a job at the New York Evening Posst, a venerable, if somewhat staid and conservative major newspaper in the 1890s. From that time on, Steffens made his own way in the world. He investigated Wall Street and went on to report on major graft going on nearby, on Mulberry Street, where the New York Police Department was headquartered.
Steffens was hired a few years later, in 1901, by the brilliant editor, Sam McClure, who was already making a huge reputation for McClure's Magazine by hiring the most eclectic and original writers any magazine has ever had on its masthead --Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ida Tarbell, William Allen White and Ray Stannard Baker, among others. Years later when a contingent of these same writers had a "falling out" with the mercurial McClure, they all hid behind a door (including Steffens) while Ida Tarbell did the negotiating.
From the beginning, the very level-headed and careful Tarbell, McClure's favorite and most trusted writer, said that Steffens was "the most brilliant addition" to the McClure's staff, even though "she often felt uncomfortable with his incredibly outspoken" and what she deemed somewhat obnoxious personality.Nevertheless, despite Tarbell's misgivings, the McClure's connection was the making of Steffens as a nationally known investigative journalist. He went on to "tutor" the new police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in the "ways" of his new department, and count him as a life-long confidante, desspite their ongoing and profound differences. And Steffens went on to investigate the governments of a score of cities across the United States -- Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Minneapolis and others, eventually packaging all these reporting forays into one critically acclaimed book "The Shame of the Cities."
And, it is a profound understatement to say that the cast of characters that Steffens made friends with along the way was legendary -- John Reed, Ernest Hemmingway, Walter Lippmann, Sinclair Lewis and others.
But in the end, the big question about Steffens that biographer Peter Hartshorn grapples with in an intelligent, careful way is why was this hard-head, award-winning muckraker was so muddle-headed when it came to looking at Russia seventeen years into the revolution when even the most ardent left-wing writers of the time were beinning to make caustic attacks on the murderous activities of the Stalin regime? The title of Hartshorn's biography, based on Steffens' famous comment, "I have seen the future," underscores the profound mark this comment and Steffens's dogmatic, uncritical view of the Stalin regime had on his journalistic legacy. As Hartshorn points out, "by 1934......daily tyranny and terror were already hallmarks of the Stalin regime, that seventeen years into the revolution could not be easily dismissed......."
"In the end," Hartshorn writes, "Steffens went too far. His aceptance of Lenin and Communism was extreme. But his painstaking diagnosis of the central problem in his own country --the deliberate suppression of democracy --and his courage in pursuing and revealing this ugly truth helped to set America on a better course, rightfully establishing the name of Lincoln Steffens as the greatest of the muckrakers."
Nevertheless, despite Hartshorn's balanced, graceful writing job and his intensive research on turn of the century politics and journalism, Lincoln Steffens himself still seems somewhat elusive.

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At the dawn of the twentieth century, Lincoln Steffens, an internationally known and respected political insider, went rogue to work for McClure's Magazine. Credited as the proverbial father of muckraking reporting, Steffens quickly rose to the top of McClure's team of investigative journalists, earning him the attention of many powerful politicians who utilized his knack for tireless probing to battle government corruption and greedy politicians. A mentor of Walter Lippmann, friend of Theodore Roosevelt, and advisor of Woodrow Wilson, Steffens is best known for bringing to light the Mexican Revolution, the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times, and the Versailles peace talks.Now, with print journalism and investigative reporters on the decline, Lincoln Steffens' biography serves as a necessary call to arms for the newspaper industry. Hartshorn's extensive research captures each detail of Steffens' life-from his private letters to friends to his long and colorful career-and delves into the ongoing internal struggle between his personal life and his overpowering devotion to the "cause."

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