About this ebook
When Ickes wrote his first column in the New Republic, the editors of the magazine introduced him on May 2, 1949 as “old enough to be called an Elder Statesman, but he is too salty for that label. He himself has cheerfully accepted the epithet of Curmudgeon, which likewise is insufficient to his case. A more accurate description would be that he is America’s most venerable progressive and one of the stoutest fighters, at any age, for justice and good government.”
Righteous Pilgrim was a non-fiction National Book Award finalist in 1990, and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography in 1991 and was a finalist for theNational Book Critics Circle Award.
“an outstanding biography that is also a major work of social history spanning the first half of the 20th century... [Ickes was] a courageous public servant who in Righteous Pilgrim receives long overdue recognition.” — Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times
“highly successful... Written in a delightful conversational style that disguises the impressive scholarly research that went into its preparation, this is an appreciative biography of a man who was so temperamental, thin-skinned and bluntly outspoken that he acknowledged these traits himself... This thoughtful, readable, and yet gripping book is so persuasive it may well force a more positive reassessment of the New Deal... Righteous Pilgrim is likely to be one of the most significant histories of the Progressive and New Deal reform impulse to appear in a decade.” — Howard R. Lamar,Washington Post
“[an] elegant and exhaustive new biography of Ickes... Using primary sources (such as the diary Ickes religiously maintained through most of his life) with great sensitivity, [Watkins] provides an astonishingly intimate portrait of a public man... Watkins, editor of The Wilderness Society magazine Wilderness, is a wonderfully skillful writer... As Watkins powerfully demonstrates in this rewarding and illuminating work, Ickes had no shortage of ego — but his real fuel was conviction, burning at an octane hardly ever seen in Washington any more.” — Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times
“[an] engaging, monumental biography” — Publishers Weekly
“Researched with amazing thoroughness and organized with a sure hand, this will undoubtedly prove to be the definitive work on Harold L. Ickes... Watkins portrays the currents of political maneuvering that swirled and eddied about Ickes with admirable clarity. A complex, fascinating, and convincing portrait.” — Kirkus Reviews
“[a] worthy, well-written biography.“ — Clayton R. Koppes, Reviews in American History
“Harold Ickes was one of the most interesting political figures of the first half of the twentieth century, and T. H. Watkins vividly sets forth both the complexities of his personality and personal life and the remarkable scope of his achievements.” — Frank Freidel
“A superbly written story of the preeminent Progressive of this century. I couldn’t put it down.” — Stewart L. Udall
“Righteous Pilgrim is one of those rare and wonderful biographies that are at once incisive portraiture and important social history.” — Wallace Stegner
“Harold Ickes stomps across the pages of T. H. Watkins’s biography as one of the most arresting and essential figures of the American twentieth century.” — Frederick Turner
“At last, a biography worthy of its extraordinary subject — vivid, impassioned, larger-than-life.” — Geoffrey C. Ward
About the author
Born in Loma Linda, California, Thomas Henry Watkins (1936-2000) grew up on the edge of the Mojave desert and became an outdoorsman because the family went camping in southern California. He attended San Bernardino Valley College and Redlands University. After graduating he moved to San Francisco, where he worked in the mail room at the San Francisco Chroniclewhile trying to write novels. He attended graduate history classes at San Francisco State.
In the 1960s he worked for American West magazine, where he met the novelist and conservationist Wallace Stegner. In 1969, Watkins became editor of the magazine. In 1976 Mr. Watkins moved to New York, where he spent six years as an editor atAmerican Heritage. In 1982 he became editor of the Wilderness Society’s Wildernessmagazine in Washington DC, which he went on to lead for 15 years. In 1997, afterWilderness cut back publication to one issue per year, he moved to Bozeman, Montana where he became the Wallace Stegner distinguished professor of Western American studies at Montana State University.
Watkins was a prolific writer on environmental issues: he authored 28 books, first about San Francisco’s history and architecture and later Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952, a 1990 finalist for the National Book Award,The Lands No One Knows: America and the Public Domain and The Hungry Years: A Narrative History of the Great Depression. Watkins wrote hundreds of magazine articles for publications such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler and National Geographic.
