1904: The History of the Standard Oil Company
Author/Editor: Ida M. Tarbell
Image courtesy of Biography Resource Center
This book, by Ida M. Tarbell, was listed as No. 5 in a 1999 list by New York University of the top 100 works of 20th-century American journalism. She is widely known as one of the best journalists of her time. A graduate of Allegheny College, Tarbell’s work sets the standard for investigative journalism with her remarkable research and fact-checking still a benchmark in 2013.
This publication is one of the great examples of the muckrakers of journalism. The term muckraker refers to reform-minded journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism. McClure’s magazine supported the work of Tarbell and the Standard Oil reports were originally published in the McClure’s magazine.
