American Decades
Nader, Ralph 1934-
CONSUMER ADVOCATE
True Believer.
Ralph Nader is both a reformer and a visionary. His roots extended to the early-twentieth-century muckrakers, to Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and others who roused the nation against business exploitation. So he launched fact-filled thunder-bolts from the 1960s onward against hazardous automobiles and natural gas pipelines, unsafe mining methods, unwholesome meat processing, and other dangers to the consumers.
David versus Goliath.
Nader was a virtually monkish idealist who was single, lived ascetically, owned no property, and cared only for the truth he was uncovering. Nader's assaults fitted the temper of the Vietnam War era and the growing assumption that the country's leaders and institutions were self-centered and deceitful. Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed: the Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile (1965) was a smash hit, and the thin, thirtyish man became...
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1970's Business and the Economy
