Kevin Mattson

"Upton Sinclair was the first celebrity to run for governor of California. He published an eponymous magazine and lectured Americans on war, wages, diet, education, the media, and anything else he could think of. He wrote books fast, made important friends faster, and made enemies fastest of all. He won a Pulitzer, but not for the most important book he ever wrote, The Jungle. He wrote a book that Disney made into one of his worst movies. His love life was a national scandal. He lost a fortune financing (on Charlie Chaplin's advice) a Sergei Eisenstein film the director never finished. He lived and wrote and argued his way through World War I, workers' revolts, frivolous flappers, Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, and even, at the end, Vietnam. Upton Sinclair never thought he'd be the twentieth century's greatest novelist, but he may have been its greatest progressive activist. He was unquestionably a one-of-a-kind American." "With the publication of his ferocious expose of the Chicago meat packing industry, Sinclair gained instant fame as a formidable opponent of the powerful forces he saw oppressing the common man - from religion to unregulated capitalism. Not content to simply sit at home and write, Sinclair often took his show on the road. For the next sixty years, he seemed to be at the center of every national debate, supporting workers' rights, running as a Socialist candidate for political office, exposing corruption in industry and government, and, to the surprise of many of his fans, supporting Prohibition and, later, the cold war."--Jacket.

Mattson explores the work of early activists like Charles Zueblin, who tried to advance adult education at the University of Chicago, and Frederic Howe, whose People's Institute sparked the nationwide forum movement. He then turns to the social centers movement, which began in Rochester, New York, in 1907 with the opening of public schools to adults in the evening as centers for debate over current issues. Mattson tells how this simple program grew into a national phenomenon and cites its achievements and political ideals, and he analyzes the political thought of activists within the movement - notably Mary Parker Follett and Edward Ward - to show that these intellectuals had a profound understanding of what was needed to create vigorous democratic practices. Creating a Democratic Public challenges us to reconsider how we think about democracy by bringing us into critical dialogue with the past and exploring the work of yesterday's activists. Combining historical analysis, political theory, and social criticism, Mattson analyzes experiments in grassroots democracy from the Progressive Era and explores how we might foster more public involvement in political deliberation today.