Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874–1952

T. H. Watkins

Born in rural western Pennsylvania, Harold LeClair Ickes (1874-1952), son of a gambler, womanizer, drunk father and of a strictly reared Presbyterian mother, grew up desperately poor and desperately ambitious. He became a Chicago newsman during its gilded era, a key figure in the Progressive Party, and in FDR's cabinet became America's longest serving and most influential Interior Secretary. As Interior Secretary, he helped change the face of America, forging that department into the most powerful tool for the protection of our lands. He was also a major force in reshaping the character and quality of American society, often seeming to speak ex cathedra as the conscience of FDR's administration. Opinionated, vigorously outspoken, as impassioned defending minorities as defending our wild places, Ickes, who happily styled himself "the Old Curmudgeon," was arguably the most controversial and most beloved figure in the New Deal. 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, received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography in 1991, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.