Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon

For as much as Ralph Nader has influenced and shaped events in this country, most people know next to nothing about the man. Nader has had a long, fruitful career fighting for those without a voice. In this book, Justin Martin has provided the most revealing, eye opening account of a truly great citizen. As far as biographies go, this book is pretty straitforward. Martin covers Nader's childhood, school days, college days, and then onto Nader's career in Washington D.C. Martin invterviewed members of Nader's family and also his friends to help accumulate the material for the book. Part of why this book seems so fantastic to me may have something to do with the fact that it's the only one of its kind. If you want to know about how Nader got to where he is today, Martin's book is the only one available. That notwithstanding, I think the book does a great job. The fact that Nader hasn't publicly spoken out against the book also speaks to its merit. If Nader didn't like this book, or thought Martin got anything significant wrong, I believe Ralph would have let us know about it. Hopefully all those angry democrats will sit down with this book and find out how much good Nader has done for this country...

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.

I've long followed the career Ralph Nader, so when I saw NADER: CRUSADER, SPOILER, ICON by JustinMartin, 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 thelast presidential election . . . this book helped give mea 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 differentlyfrom 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.

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 vis

I actually voted for Nader in 2000 so certainly I¹m familiarwith his campaign issues and I knew a bit about his background too. But I¹m 28 years old and much of what he¹s accomplished he did while I was busy watching Punky Brewster and Saturday morning cartoons. It was illuminating to read this biography and get exposed to his whole story, birth to present. He's led a life that is more fascinating and controversial than I ever could have dreamed. And Martin does a great job giving us a great portrait of the man in full.Do I regret voting for him? While I still have mixed emotions about the whole thing I'd have to say no. Reading this book helped me clarify my own opinions on a number of issues. I highly recommend this bio, especially to read during this period in history.