Citizen Nader

Description for CITIZEN NADER by Charles McCarry:

Here is the first objective portrait of the man whose war with the corporate state may alter forever the balance between public and private power in this country. Approaching Ralph Nader and his work as neither an adversary nor an advocate, Charles McCarry succeeds brilliantly in humanizing the complex, elusive man behind the headlines.

The brouhaha attending the publication in 1965 of his book, UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED, made Nader an instant public figure: a hero to many; to others anathema, bent on nothing less than the destruction of the free enterprise system. CITIZEN NADER deals incisively with both versions of this quixotic figure who has had the audacity to tilt with such giants as General Motors and Union Carbide and thinks nothing of attacking such canny politicians and sometime allies as Edmund Muskie and Abraham Ribicoff.

The atmosphere is which Nader works, the methods he employs, and the people he attracts are fully examined, as is the astonishing range of his activities among them, his part in creating the first federal traffic safety bureau and his highly ambivalent attitude toward its first director; his alliance with reporter Nick Kotz against the abuses of the meat-packing industry; his masterful handling of the press through audacity and exquisite timing; his pivotal role in persuading "Jock" Yablonski to run for the presidency of the United Mine Workers and the subsequent bitter breakdown of confidence between them; his recent launching of a campaign for the reform of the entire United States Congress. Where possible, the author shows us Nader behind-the-scenes: his monkish private life, his recruitment of the dedicated and vigorous Raiders, his fund-raising tours, his extreme finickiness in what he eats, drinks, and breathes. ("All the legislation in which Nader has interested himself..." writes the author, "has to do with the protection of the human body.")

A Man of paradox and incongruity, Nader emerges from these pages in all his dimensions---as an individual gifted almost accidentally with enormous personal power, as a shy and intensely secretive person transformed into a celebrity, as a thoroughly committed citizen who may be technology's first saint. This is an important and deeply revealing study of one of the major public figures of recent decades.