Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon

Rating:
Summary: Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon
Review: I found this book to be very educational, often inspiring, and at various times extremely difficult to put down. Nader is a tough nut to crack in more ways than one. But I feel like I came away with a lot of insight as to what made him the person he is and has always been. When you learn all of his history, it becomes anything but surprising that Nader ended up playing the role he did in the 2000 election. And you can't help but respect him for it.

The book at times made me sad because I find it difficult to imagine there ever being another Nader. Sure, he can be a prickly son of a gun--and Martin does a nice job revealing that side--but he is a true iconoclast. A self-made man for the people. An underdog who has helped make life better and safer for thousands of people. And I guy whose life should be required reading.

My only qualm with this book is it isn't quite long enough to dig deeper into Nader's upbringing. I was intrigued by Nader's relationship with his parents and could have used a little more there. But it is a fantastic read.

Rating:
Summary: The PR Guy Who Reads
Review: I gotta say, who knew this guy was this cool? I kind of thought Ralph Nader had a story behind him. And here I find it in full living color. Martin, who wrote the fab Greenspan book from the high falutin era, now takes on an "icon" whom no one really knows...which is the point. Since Nader's plan was to stay silent and mysterious so it is wild to see Martin foil it in such an artist, comprehensive and above all, surprisingly fun manner. (Nader with his clothes off, so to speak...) I'm sure no one expected to see 'fun' and 'Nader' in the same sentence and in this book you finally get to see what all the fuss was about. I'd stood at a brick bookstore perusing a copy of Nader's quasi-autobio and thought "What is this?" Was all jargonish propoganda. This book is terrific and fascinating cause Martin goes for the jugular in a style that is refreshing - and yet not muckraking in the least. I say this bio is a new form of art: taking the wraps off someone no one knew or even thought of as more than a figurehead, and showing what that person has really done - and the consequences too. Oh and the cool part - that he's more than a political geek, that's for dessert.

Rating:
Summary: Unbiased portrait of a true American iconoclast
Review: I'm admittedly biased towards Ralph Nader, having volunteered and voted for him during the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections. That being said, I found this book to be remarkably balanced. It's neither a hagiography nor a hatchet job, but rather gives equal weight to Nader's achievements and shortcomings.

Martin writes extremely well, with a brisk pace: by page 30 Nader has finished law school, and by page 45 he's written "Unsafe at Any Speed" and is ready to take on GM! Despite the quick pacing, Martin doesn't gloss over Nader's early years: he presents the reader with all the necessary information on Nader's upbringing and influences, relying on well-chosen anecdotes rather than tedious genealogies.

The section on Nader's crusade against GM practically reads like a spy thriller. Fans of Nader will thrill during his "peak period" of 1969-1976, when it seemed he could do no wrong. But those same fans will scratch their head later on, when Nader inexplicably sabotages some of his own initiatives through a refusal to compromise with Congress.

Martin quickens the pace of the book yet again when detailing Nader's quixotic presidential runs. He describes the alienation Nader felt after being rebuffed by the Clinton/Gore administration - a feeling than no doubt sparked his candidacy and defused any feelings of remorse at possibly costing Gore the 2000 election. The irony of Nader's career is that he achieved the most when Republicans were in power, because he expected little of their administrations and focused on galvanizing grassroots efforts to achieve reform.

This is an excellent biography, a revealing portrait of a man who has devoted his life to consumer advocacy and making America a safer place to live.

Rating:
Summary: Unbiased portrait of a true American iconoclast
Review: I'm admittedly biased towards Ralph Nader, having volunteered and voted for him during the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections. That being said, I found this book to be remarkably balanced. It's neither a hagiography nor a hatchet job, but rather gives equal weight to Nader's achievements and shortcomings.

Martin writes extremely well, with a brisk pace: by page 30 Nader has finished law school, and by page 45 he's written "Unsafe at Any Speed" and is ready to take on GM! Despite the quick pacing, Martin doesn't gloss over Nader's early years: he presents the reader with all the necessary information on Nader's upbringing and influences, relying on well-chosen anecdotes rather than tedious genealogies.

The section on Nader's crusade against GM practically reads like a spy thriller. Fans of Nader will thrill during his "peak period" of 1969-1976, when it seemed he could do no wrong. But those same fans will scratch their head later on, when Nader inexplicably sabotages some of his own initiatives through a refusal to compromise with Congress.

Martin quickens the pace of the book yet again when detailing Nader's quixotic presidential runs. He describes the alienation Nader felt after being rebuffed by the Clinton/Gore administration - a feeling than no doubt sparked his candidacy and defused any feelings of remorse at possibly costing Gore the 2000 election. The irony of Nader's career is that he achieved the most when Republicans were in power, because he expected little of their administrations and focused on galvanizing grassroots efforts to achieve reform.

This is an excellent biography, a revealing portrait of a man who has devoted his life to consumer advocacy and making America a safer place to live.

Rating:
Summary: Balanced (though not overly favorable) view of Nader
Review: I've long followed the career Ralph Nader, so when
I saw NADER: CRUSADER, SPOILER, ICON by Justin
Martin, I just had to read it . . . and I'm
glad I did, in that in doing so, I came away with a balanced
(though not overly favorable) view of the consumer advocate
that I have long admired.

Nader has been tireless in his efforts to bring about change
in America . . . while sometimes spreading himself too thin,
he nevertheless has accomplished a great deal in his lifetime.

Though he tries to deny it, Nader had a profound impact on the
last presidential election . . . this book helped give me
a better understanding as to his thinking on why he ran.

I also came away with the impression that he rarely sleeps . . . and I got a chuckle out of the description of one appearance with Jay Leno . . . when asked about what he did for fun, he said "no" to dating and movies . . . but when pressed, he did finally admit that he ate strawberries!

There were many memorable passages; among them:
* Alan Morrison--a longtime friend and colleague of Nader's--has the following observation: "I have never known anybody who has more ideas about more things than Ralph. He's not interested in two or three or five or ten things. He's interested in a million. He sees things differently
from everybody else. He just sees injustices, unfairness, and improper ways of handling situations that everyone else just accepts. He has a cosmic view of these things, very broad, but at the same time, he is a person who pays enormous attention to details. I never met anybody who can think so big and think so small at the same time."

* As a boss, Nader remained an original. He once claimed that his number-one criterion for hiring people was that they be thick-skinned. "People often ask me how I choose the people to work with me," he explained. "Well, you start off by saying they have to be bright, hard-working, the usual traits. But the one key probably is how willing they are not to be loved."

* Nader asked [Bobby] Fischer his secret. Fischer explained that there was calculation in many of his decisions, whether showing up late to matches, canceling interviews, even refusing an invitation to visit the White House. It made him seem like a
temperamental genius, even more than he actually was, and the
public ate it up. "If you want to get attention to the game, you have to manipulate the press," Fischer explained.

For Nader, this was confirmation of his own instincts. His aim was to draw attention to the cause of consumerism. During this era, he was a marionette master when it came to the press. At every opportunity, Nader cast himself as an indefatigable advocate, grave, selfless, working away while the innocent citizenry sleeps. This had the advantage of not being too far from the truth. But it was not the whole truth.

Rating:
Summary: Ralph Nader Makes a Little More Sense Now
Review: Justin Martin seems to work hard at his craft, although I'm not certain he puts in twenty-hour days, seven days a week, as Nader apparently often has done. After conducting a vast number of interviews both with Nader himself and with everyone of importance who has ever known the U.S.'s primary Public Citizen, Martin did not bog down with his overwhelming information but instead whipped it into twenty chapters of coherent, thoughtful, and illuminating prose. Bravo!

This biography seems balanced. While admiring Nader and his remarkable work as America's first- and best-known Consumer Advocate, Martin doesn't fail to point out eccentricities, flaws, blemishes, and gaffs. Nader, despite attempts to portray himself as ascetic and near-saint, turns out to be human after all. He likes Tammy Wynette songs and Marx-Brothers films. Thank heavens!

I voted twice for Nader for President. (2004 is another story!) The information contained in this admirable biography does not make me feel I wasted my vote. Nader is a driven man with genuine integrity. He displays high levels of Walter Kaufmann's four virtues: honesty, courage, empathy, and humble ambition. However, he is far from perfect. That's an inevitable corrolary of the human condition.

Readers like myself who are unfamiliar with the depth and breadth of Nader's work and career will find Martin's biography fascinating and fast-paced. Although I may not be tempted to call Mr. Nader to invite him out for a Dubonnet on the rocks to discuss Harpo and Groucho, I am extremely thankful that Nader the man has been so fortunate, so driven, so idealistic, and so on the side of the Little Guy. Along with Michael Moore and Howard Zinn and Walter Kaufmann, Nader is a hero and role model. May he keep on doin' for many more years!

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but Nader remains an enigma
Review: Ralph Nader is arguably one of the most fascinating (and polarizing) figures on the American scene. He's been in the public eye for nearly four decades, and has along the way attracted intense loyalty but also intense fury, especially after running a presidential campaign two years ago that split the political left right down the middle. Nader is nothing if not a tightly wrapped bundle of contradictions, all of which simply makes him so intriguing. The public Nader is well known, but the private Ralph is exactly that, very private. Which naturally causes someone like me to ask the question: just what makes this guy tick?

In truth, we'll probably never know the whole Nader, which only makes a biography such as this all the more interesting. The author had thorough access to both Nader himself as well as lots of his allies, ex-allies, family members and others who were associated with or interacted with him over the years, yet, despite all this, the author, at the end of the day, seems to find the man as much an enigma as when he started this project. The reader is left to read between the lines and in the process form his own conclusions. And my own go along the following: first, it's my theory that Nader is hard to peg down because he is a leading member of a group that's never been formally identified, a group I'll call Political Fundamentalists. Much like their counterparts on the Right (the Religious Fundamentalists), the Political Fundamentalists possess an overwhelming sense of the rightness of their ideology. They are, in this world of all-around relativism, political True Believers for whom terms like "negotiate" and "give and take" simply don't exist in their lexicon and "compromise" is a dirty word. As a result, on the one hand, these type people tend to achieve their agenda as a result of pure, bulldog determination. They simply allow nothing to get in their way because, to them, it's not just one set of values competing against others in the political arena, but rather a clash between absolute good versus absolute evil. This, as the book points out with many examples, is largely the secret behind Nader's influence and clout, especially in his "glory years" that started in the mid 60's and reached a peak in the mid 70's. But, as numerous other examples given here show, it also resulted in Nader having as his own worst enemy none other than himself. Too often his determination simply became dogmatism, which caused him to pick too many fights with potential allies because they had, in his estimation strayed from the Righteous Path.

Nowhere was this more evident than in his quixotic 2000 campaign. On the one hand, his motivations seemed quite sincere; he really did believe that the Democrats had become much too similar to the GOP and that his Green Party offered a real alternative. On the other hand, the author makes a good case that Nader not only felt Gore had "sold out", but furthermore, he seemed to detest the man on a personal and visceral level. To a Fundamentalist, heathens and pagans can be partly excused on account of their presumed ignorance of the True Faith, but Gore was a heretic, an apostate who had rejected The Way in favor of pragmatism and worldly success. He seemed to revel in waving his "spoiler" status in Gore's face, actively campaigning right up to the last in highly competitive states, and to this day, he remains utterly unrepentant of the incontrovertible fact that he, far more than the "butterfly ballot" or anything else, cost him the election. On the one hand, this sense of Olympian detachment, of indifference to the intense fire he came under, has a certain admirable quality to it. In an era chock full of spin-doctors and political hacks, Nader was the Real Deal. But, on the other hand, one senses a man so full of himself that he had lost sight of the difference between taking a principled stand and self-righteous egomania.

So much for the "public" Nader. It may sound clichéd, but if you understand what motivates Jerry Falwell, you pretty much understand Nader as well. The absolutism, the devotion to fundamental ideology is basically the same, never mind the differences in their specific beliefs. But what about the private Ralph? This is a much more interesting nut (pun intended) to crack. The political Left is generally thought to be the realm of hedonists and libertines, men and women who flout traditional mores concerning things like sex and drug use. Nader is the exact opposite, a modern day ascetic, a Harry Hairshirt whose rejection of the pleasures of the flesh is a notable part of his legend. It would seem that not once have his lips touched either women or liquor, nor (God forbid!) tobacco. He has no car, nor much in the way of personal possessions beyond the bare necessities. He does not seem to have any hobbies or any other forms of recreation. He does not take vacations or travel for pleasure. In fact, among the 6 billion or so humans alive on this planet, he alone seems to have no interest (or even capacity) to enjoy life. That is perhaps the core of what makes Nader so fascinating. This is a man who has never fallen in love, who exists in a world full of beauty and wonder yet who sees none of it because he lives only for The Cause, like some dutiful soldier he grimly presses on, year after year, no matter what obstacles come his way. How can a person live like this? Perhaps, like some early Christian martyr, his beliefs are simply much more important. Or perhaps it's due to some psychological quirk, something that has created a desert in his soul and made it a dry, harsh place where there simply is no room for pleasure, for simply enjoying being alive. Whatever it is, it is an enigma that Nader is not about to share with anyone (as is his right) and one he'll undoubtedly take to his grave.

Rating:
Summary: The muckraker doesn't know when to stop raking the mud
Review: The intelligent, take no prisoners, crusader of consumer rights is featured in Justin Martin's new book, Nader, Crusader, Icon Spoiler. Overall, the book, 281 pages, reads well and is organized, but suffers from what appears to be some author-induced opinions which detract from the book's authenticity. Still, the book is an interesting story about a guy who never gave up, made life a little safer on the highways, but doesn't know how to stop when he's ahead. This, leading to the title of this review, in a quote by Teddy Roosevelt listed in the Nader biography by Martin to describe Nader.

Martin brings us through Nader's early life in Conneticut, his college and law school days at Princeton and Harvard and then his life stuggle against for profit corporations. Ultimately the theme of Nader's life, as described by Martin, is essentially a life long vendetta against the corporation. In the early days of Nader's career, as told by Martin, Nader had the issues behind him. Auto safety, for instance, was an important issue which Nader championed with much success. In the later years, however, Nader picked fight after fight, including a fight with President Jimmy Carter, according to Martin. This fight just seemed so unnecessary, according to Martin.

The political quotes choosen by Martin in the Nader biography are fun to read, but some of Martin's choosen quotes to describe a point he wants to make seem unnecessarily targeted to the potential reader audience which, in my opinion, takes away from the biography.

For instance, Martin seems to take some unnecessary pot shots at Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush. Martin, in describing how Nader despised the typical Ivy Leaguer, chooses this quote by Nader:
"At Princeton, the athlete was king... Donald Rumsfeld was on the wrestling team and he would swagger around campus."

Another unnecessary quote was when Martin is describing how hard working the Nader workers were; Martin chooses to insert a quote by one of Nader's guys from Yale who attended at the same time as our current President, "When I [referring to the Nader worker] was studying..., Bush was getting drunk at the frat house across the street." These quotes appear to add little more than some cheap pot shot humor that should not be used in a serious biography.

Rating:
Summary: Muckraker can't stop raking the mud
Review: The intelligent, take no prisoners, crusader of consumer rights is featured in Justin Martin's new book, Nader: Crusader, Icon Spoiler. Martin is also the author of Greenspan: the Man Behind the Money. Overall, Nader: Crusader, Icon Spoiler, 288 pages, reads well and is organized, but suffers from what appears to be some author-induced opinions that detract from the book's authenticity.

Still, the book is an interesting story about a guy who never gives up, made life a little safer on the highways, but doesn't know how to stop when he's ahead. As Martin points out by quoting Teddy Roosevelt, muckrakers are an important part of society, but must know when to stop raking the muck. Nader, according to Martin and other accounts, just doesn't know when to stop stirring up the muck.

Martin brings us through Nader's early life in Connecticut, his college and law school days at Princeton and Harvard and then his life struggle against for profit corporations. Ultimately the theme of Nader's life, as described by Martin, is essentially a life long vendetta against the corporation. In the early days of Nader's career, as told by Martin, Nader had the issues behind him. Auto safety, for instance, was an important issue which Nader championed with much success. In the later years, however, Nader picked fight after fight, including a fight with President Jimmy Carter, according to Martin. This fight just seemed so unnecessary, according to Martin. This experience highlighted by Martin brings out the defensive, never satisfied, approach Nader always gives to his project. Nader is more worried about looking like a compromiser than in getting a good result, according to Martin and this comes out in this episode.

The political quotes that Martin chooses in the Nader biography are fun to read, but some of Martin's chosen quotes to describe a point he wants to make seem unnecessarily targeted to the more liberal audience likely to read this book and, in my view, take away from the author's credibility.

For instance, Martin seems to take some unnecessary pot shots at Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush. Martin, in describing how Nader disliked the typical Ivy Leaguer, chooses this quote by Nader: "At Princeton, the athlete was king... Donald Rumsfeld was on the wrestling team and he would swagger around campus." Another unnecessary quote was when Martin is describing how hard working the Nader workers were; Martin chooses to insert a quote by one of Nader's guys from Yale who attended at the same time as our current President, "When I [referring to the Nader worker] was studying..., Bush was getting drunk at the frat house across the street." These quotes appear to add little more than some cheap pot shot humor that should not be used in a serious biography.

In any event, other than these unnecessary quips, the book is an interesting overview of Ralph Nader.