Rick WartzmanBesprekingen

The Grapes of Wrath is one of my all time favorite books and judging by the blurb on the back of Wartaman's book I was expecting to be reading an in debt examination of Steinbeck's writing of The Grapes of Wrath, focusing on the literary merit of the novel. Turns out though, that I wound up reading more of an historical examination of politics, economics, and labor movements during 1930ies California. The work itself, is well done, unfortunately it's just not what I was expecting or hoping for.

This book is an easily read series of 3 page articles from a Bloomberg business column. So the book is in nice small manageable chunks. They end with the date it was published, which gives me another perspective on the current events going on when it was written. It has caused me to have a more favorable opinion of Obama since quite a few of the articles concerned his doings.

Drucker like to ask questions. "If you're not a direct competitor, companies love to tell you how successful they are and how they do it." (Page 11)

It motivated me to start reading Middlemarch, from 1871 because the book hinted that Drucker read it (and other books) every summer. "I am rereading each summer – and have for many years – the main novelist," among them Austen, Thackeray, and George Elliot. I never read management books all they do is corrupt style.” (Page 21)

“Another attribute of Drucker … was the way he would ‘look beyond the corporate world’ to art, sociology, history, theology, literature … to help shape his views. ‘He was a master at synthesis,’” (Page 23-24)

“The news this month that women now outnumber men on the nation’s payrolls, … that held 50.3 percent of the nation’s nonfarm payroll jobs." (January 2010). (Page 160) Finding this intriguing, I checked the current numbers. I found 49.3% for Feb & Mar 2012 at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t21.htm. That so many positions once dominated by males have lost that status is a dramatic demographic change that is unsettling because of the video game lethargy overcoming so many of the young men. The women are taking up the slack and doing a fantastic job of it. But what about all those indolent males?


“’There is mounting evidence that government is big rather than strong; that it is fat and flabby rather than powerful; that it costs a great deal, but does not achieve much’” (1966, Page 229)

And on the need for avoiding too much clutter; a too dense schedule:
“’The Japanese paintings are dominated by empty space.’” (Page 261)

The book's focus is on how General Motors, General Electric, Kodak and Coca Cola handled employee relations and hiring from the 1920's to today. What interests me were the stories of the impact on employees, particularly with those of long tenure, when the company let them go. (e.g. An IBM employee received a termination letter describing him as a "surplus employee.") There is also an eye opening chapter on how Walmart treats their employees. (To be charitable it can be described as poorly and cheaply.)

This is a well researched book and should be required reading for those college students studying business or those interested in a career in management.

I'm so impressed by it's treatment of 'welfare capitalism' that I'm ordering the print book so as to be able to pay more attention. He calls the modern corporate focus solely on investor benefits, to the detriment of employee benefits, a perversion.

Wartzman begins by examining The Committee for Economic Development (CED) established during World War II to consider a healthy transition back to a civilian economy. He particularly examined the corporate philosophies of Eastman Kodak, GM, GE, and Coca Cola. These leaders recognized the importance of sharing company gains with their workforce.

He calls for a re-examination and re-alignment in today's boardrooms.

4 stars: Very good.

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Very good

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From the back cover: Few books have caused as big a stir as John Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath'. A month after it was published in April 1939, it stood as the nation's #1 best seller. And by summer in Kern County, California, the Joads' newfound home, the book was burned publicly and banned from local schools and library shelves. Obscene in the Extreme tells the remarkable story behind this fit of censorship.

When agribusiness titan Bill Camp presides over the books' torching in downtown Bakersfield, he declares "We are angry not because we were attacked, but because we were attacked by a book obscene in the extreme sense of the word." Yet [librarian Gretchen] Knief bravely fights back: "If that book is banned today, what will be banned tomorrow?"

The backlash to the publication of GoW --a book praised by FDR and ER and seared into the public's consciousness by the lyrics of Woodie Guthrie and the on screen performance of Henry Fonda--serves as a window into an extraordinary time of upheaval in America. It was a time when, as Steinbeck put it, there seemed to be a revolution going on.

Rick Wartzman beautifully and meticulously brings to life this moment in history, when Nazis were burning books in Europe and Americans were questioning whether capitalism itself was worth preserving. Those who found strength in Steinbeck's work believed, as he did, that California's farming giants were mistreating their migrant laborers. Those who condemned the book believed that society was in danger of disintegrating, thanks to troublemakers like Steinbeck. Obscene in the Extreme highlights just how volatile the world was in 1939, how central California was a tinderbox, and the GoW a match.

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This book covers a one week history, with a brief forward and afterword, in the life of Bakersfield, some of its residents, and GoW. It started out for me as a 10 star book, but the middle bogged down a little bit--but only a little bit--- as it discussed the lives of some of the players involved. An excellent read, particularly as it puts this specific act of censorship in context with Hitler's Germany and bannings that were occurring there. The last paragraph also throws out a bit about rising inequality in the US and hopefully we don't need it again---but with an entire book that does not mention modern US politics, I found that to be unnecessary.

I also did not know previous to this, that Steinbeck's wife suggested the title, which comes from the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" :

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on."

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Quotes from within, which tell the story better than I can:

"A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned, the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive." -- John Steinbeck, from the inside cover.

The thing that worries me is that "it could happen here". If that book is banned today, what will be banned tomorrow? And what group will want a book banned the day after that? It's such a vicious and dangerous thing to begin and may in the end lead to exactly the same thing we see in Europe today-- Gretchen Knief, librarian.

Miller went on to report the actual number of objections to the novel... The grand total--zero--made Abel look like a fibber or a fool. Meanwhile, she couldn't resist toying with her interview subject just a bit more. "Mr Abel, do you think that the Board of Supervisors should act as censors of the books in the county library?" "I certainly do think so, when the books are filthy." "Mr. Abel, are you aware that there are a number of books in the county library written by young American authors, Steinbeck's contemporaries, that might be considered just as obscene as The Grapes of Wrath?" Abel paused, obviously thrown off stride. "II was not aware of it. I'll have to speak to Miss Knief about it. Yes sir, I'll certainly have to speak to Miss Knief."

One day when he was out irrigating, Clell saw a wagon rolling down the highway. From a distance, it looked a little like one of the horse drawn plows he had guided in Missouri. But as it got closer, he saw that it wasn't a horse in the lead. IT was a man hooked up to some kind of harnass, lumbering along, pulling a buggy with his wife and baby on top. "It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen" Clell said.

[Banning books] is driven primarily by one thing: fear. Fear that a wildly popular novel had shined a light on an inherently iniquitous system. Fear that society might rise up as a result. Fear by a fortunate few that the world they sat atop might soon come unglued.

Raymond Henderson, blind lawyer from the ACLU, dove right in, protesting the banning of the novel on the grounds that a library should be an open instituion, not a partisan repository. "We are not concerned with whether GoW is a good or a bad book. But we are concerned with whether a public board can set itself up as a board of censors to decide what the people shall or shall not read. If this sort of thing should be allowed to continue, the Republicans could ban a book written by a Democrat, and Democrats could bar a book by a Republican."

Henderson proceeded to read aloud a section about incest between a man and his daughters. That, he said, "is from another book. It is in our library. Would you like to ban it?" Abel, usually not one at a loss for words, remained quiet. "That passage I just quoted", Henderson said, "is from the Old Testament, Mr. Abel"--the story of Lot in the Book of Genesis.

"These supervisors are not shocked by the language in Steinbeck's book," said Weltha Smithson, a 54 yo grandmother and member of the Workers' Alliance, "They've heard it all their lives. They just don't want the true conditions exposed. Sure, we have had to crowd whole families into one small tent. We didn't want to live that way. We had to. The migrants are proud of John STeinbeck's book. And if the migrants want to cuss, I think they've got a right to cuss. How well we know those words-- 'Starvation wages'".

Mature adults should not need to be shielded against so called 'objectionable' books -- county library manual

What STeinbeck had contested, and would always contest, was any repression of a person's spirit, be it at the hands of the Associated Farmers or Stalin's secret police. "I believe in and will fight for the right of the individual to function as an individual without pressure from any direction" he wrote in 1954.

I read the Advance Copy, so keeping that in mind...

The thought of Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" ever being burned is unfathomable in the Western world, so learning that it happened in 1939, in California, is worth reading about. A topic that isn't even brought up in school, certainly feels at home here in Rick Wartzman's "Obscene in the Extreme". The style of Wartzman's prose is best suited for history books, which is why I strained at reading this book; it plodded most of the time. Set during the week of the book burning, Wartzmen speeds us back into time at every turn of the page, zipping us through history lessons of California's tumultuous times during the Depression of the 1930s, the states' dealing with the influx of immigrants from Oklahoma, and unionization of the farm workers. We also get tales of the call to fight Communism, brought on mostly by corporate farms and politicians steered by them.

As a class in American history, this book is top-notch. As a literary piece of work, it is poor. And Wartzman's nagging use of the thesaurus, lured my thoughts away from the subject matter.

I found this a very good read. Reading about the social aspects that surrounded the controversy made me understand better that it wasn't so much the book that was offensive, it was how people responded to the book. I felt as though the author was stretching the story along at times, but not enough to change my enjoyment of it.

As a fan of The Grapes of Wrath (and also of The Worst Hard Time), I found it interesting to read about the effects of Steinbeck's novel and about the labor class divisions of the time. Wartzman's book was hard to follow at times. I would get caught up in one story (the initial librarian, for example) and want to know more, but Wartzman would move on to another thread.

I can't say that I enjoyed this. I agree with another reviewer who said that this would have made a good magazine article, but I didn't find it to be particularly suitable as a book-length work. It was very simple -- an interesting topic with relatively uninteresting execution. The concentration on the minutia of county government was very boring. I could almost see this as a serial in a newspaper. Again, it's a great concept, but it was simply not executed in a compelling manner.

This book opened my eyes to the controversy of a modern stand-by. Having read this Dustbowl slice-of-life in high school, I never knew the truth could be so hard to swallow for so many, especially to the heinous ends of banning and burning, which I am against in any form.

This was a great history of a book, region, and culture. The format was interesting – following the days of the banning while giving the back story of the major players. I did make me want to go back and read Grapes of Wrath again though.

Note: I received this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Using the banning of the Grapes of Wrath in Kern County, California as a backdrop, this book is more of an examination of the people and politics behind the condittions shown in "The Grapes of Wrath" than a full-fledged case study of said banning incident. However, its examination of the backlash from the publishing of The Grapes of Wrath is truly fascinating. It's occasionally slow and plodding, though, and doesn't keep up the pace.

Interesting documentation of a very intense period in California's and America's history, touching on the mob mentality and frenzied, book-burning mores in a depression-era agricultural community.

This book was not bad, just not what I was hoping for. There was so much information about the politics of agriculture in California and not so much about the censorship of The Grapes of Wrath. I kept thinking that all the detailed background story would lead to a discussion of censorship that just never materialized.

Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

by Rick Wartzman

Obscene in the Extreme, goes into depth concerning the mass burning and banning of the epic chronicle "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. The most intense attacks came from the Associated Farmers of California. They were in uproar about the depictions of themselves and their actions in the novel.They denounced it as untruthful and even went as far as labeling it communist propaganda.

"The Story is not laid in war-torn Spain, nor in Nazi Germany-but in the United States".This effected Steinbeck profoundly and "It was this nexus-linking one man's profit to another's privation-that would become a primary theme in The Grapes of Wrath".

This is a well written, informative read on a dark time in Californian and American history. It reminds us how a herd mentality can negatively react to something they know little about. Many of the participants of the burning and banning had not even read the book. This should be used as a companion book to "The Grapes of Wrath" as it makes the understanding of a time and class system much more realistic; it did for me. A time that many of us have forgotten or knew nothing of, revisited. A great book

Once again people are willing to ban materials based on their monetary needs, rather than the worth of the material. The Kern County growers wanted to maintain the status quo regarding the wages and care they gave the migrant workers; Steinbeck threatened to upset that valuable network. Hence the ban. Remember folks: this is fiction.
The author delves into the lives of the county board, the growers associations, the migrants, the author, and peripherally the librarian. Coming out of the depression, the playing field was no longer level. The haves were protecting theirs; the have-nots wanted theirs. It seems that only Steinbeck was fighting for them, although some smaller groups did work for the migrants as well. But Steinbeck made the splash.
A well written work on the issues surrounding the writing and banning of the Grapes of Wrath, which includes issues and people that probably were only known locally. I particularly likes the pictures that were inserted, which did not stick to the Lange Depression photos but others that we have not seen.½

I received this book for Early Reviewers and had begun but the book had not caught my interest really, then my husband saw it on the side table and began reading it. He loved it. He is not an avid reader but does enjoy an occasional very good book. He said that the book was written in the format of a novel, read like a novel but had the intellectual context of a textbook that could be coupled with The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck for a University Study Class. He was intrigued by the information and really enjoyed the novel very much. Thank you!½

This book made me so angry. I probably should not have been reading it in the days before a contentious election.

John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" brought to light the appalling conditions endured by migrants from the Dust Bowl States who came to California in search of work. The controversy surrounding the book forms the backbone of this book about the conditions and politics of Depression-era California, a time even more politically polarized than today.

I enjoyed this book, despite its clear bias, and took heart from the brave men and women who were willing to take great risks to reveal and eradicate the gross injustices of the time.½

I was excited to read a book about my favorite book, The Grapes of Wrath.
However, I was disappointed. This books seems more about the history of the California agricultural business, the politics of the time, and the author's extensive research into those subjects.
I found it very difficult to get into. There was little mention of John Steinbeck or the book to hook me and reel me in.
While it is obviously well-researched, it was not at all what I expected.

A great read for Banned Books Week this year!

When I was offered an advance reading copy of Obscene in the Extreme to review, I gladly accepted. Book banning, and the politics behind book banning is of great interest to me. So, in honor of Banned Books Week, I not only read banned books, but read a book about banning books.

I read The Grapes of Wrath back in high school for an American history class. Unfortunately, it was towards the end of the year, so we didn't spend as much time on it as we probably should have. I don't' remember much about the book or discussions beyond a basic understanding of the novel and a few choice scenes (including the probably most infamous last one). I definitely don't recall the pervasive vulgar language and promiscuity in the book, but it is certainly there. I have a vague recollection that I liked the novel.

Obscene in the Extreme, though interesting, is not exactly about what it says it's about. With the subtitle of "The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath" I really expected it to be about, well, the burning and banning of The Grapes of Wrath. In reality, while the controversy over Steinbeck's novel serves as a focal and jumping off point, the book is really more about the surrounding labor and Californian county politics.

The book definitely helped me better place The Grapes of Wrath in historical context and to understand its impact and significance. While this historical context is important, the book seemed to spend too much time providing mini-biographies on anyone and everyone even remotely connected to the controversy over the novel in California. I would have rather seen more examination of the book itself, Steinbeck, and the controversy as these were the sections that most interested me. California wasn't the only place Steinbeck's novel caused a stir, a fact that is only briefly mentioned and could have been further expanded upon.

Obscene in the Extreme is well researched eve if it is written in a more journalistic rather than scholarly fashion. As with most books written in this style, notes are not indicated directly in the text but are included as endnotes, divided by chapter and page number. A very nice bibliography of works consulted by the author is also included. While easy to read, strict attention to who is who must be paid to avoid becoming disoriented by the dizzying number of players in the drama. Ultimately, the book was approachable and informative, even if not what I had anticipated.

Experiments in Reading

Wartzman’s talent as a journalist is clear in this work, but that talent does not translate well to writing a full-length book. This work might be appropriate for someone who is not deeply interested in the subject; it might work well for a person with a passing interest or a desire to learn very preliminary information amount about the subject. It is not, however, well suited to someone with a serious desire to learn about the controversy directly surrounding John Steinbeck’s work or a serious desire to learn about the cultural and social history leading up to the publication of this work. If the author had focused more closely on either of these subjects it might have benefitted his work quite a lot; as it stands, however, this study is too broad and lacking in any meaningful depth.
That being said, Wartzman’s writing is very readable. This work is easily accessible, which again makes this a good choice for someone who does not already possess knowledge of this subject and who simply wants to gain a general understanding.

As a Steinbeck fan, someone who spent growing up years in the Central Valley, and as an avid reader of lots of banned books as well as histories, I was disappointed by this work. As noted elsewhere, this work is either too long for an article or too short in its history.

Wartzman's style is so friendly, it drove me nuts. I'm also concerned about the reference to the writer Stephen Crain (I really believe he meant Stephen Crane), and the language which is quite proper in emails (the motion was "OK'd" by the council), but not as well used in a historical reference.

I did learn much about the period which, while relevant, seriously interrupted the story I thought I would be reading--that of the book banning and burning. The cover and notes lead you to believe that you will be learning more about the Kern County librarian who opposed the ban, or the writer who precipitated it all with his explosive novel. The bulk of the book is a history of the politics of the time, and the campaign and politics of Upton Sinclair was very enlightening.

The net? This is not the specific history that the title or blurbs would like you to believe it is; it is a broader overview of the history of the migrant worker in California during the Depression of the Twentieth Century.

Wartzman's book concerns the entire zeitgeist around one of the most famous works of American literature—the Great American Novel of the time—"The Grapes of Wrath." The book covers each of the major players, and many of the minor ones, when Kern County, California decided to ban the book from its libraries.

Wartzman clearly has a journalists' talent for condensing information and giving a good idea of the superficial character of most of those involved. But like so many journalists, he never gets much further than that—a fact that becomes especially clear when one of real-life examples of "Okies" commits suicide later in his life (after the scope of the book). Where did that come from? Without the overnight deadline of a piece in the LA Times, one wished he could have spent a little time providing insight into the characters. (And that's how they are presented, in the typical post-New Journalism fashion, as characters.)

Nevertheless, he is exacting in his detail and economical but poetic in his prose, and the result is highly readable book. At some points it can be difficult to keep all of the names straight—one might have preferred delve more into each of the board members, especially the one whose vote was shaky enough for the board to revote on banning the book after a week, Steinbeck himself, and some of the other leaders in the labor disputes at the time. But this glossing makes the book easy to pick up and read in short salvos, and gives a good bottom-up perspective of the aura of the time.

And for anyone especially interested in that, for anyone who has read the seminal Steinbeck novel at least once (even if you skipped every other chapter), this is a perfect companion to crystallize the importance and prodigiousness of the book.½

The title of the book “Obscene In the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’” is deceptive of its contents. While the first chapter spends a few pages discussing the efforts to ban the book from the Kern County library, and while the last chapter focuses more on those efforts and the immediate aftermath, the rest of the book focuses nearly exclusively on the labor issues in California during the 1930s and only mentions “The Grapes of Wrath” in passing references from time to time.

The background and history of that region is important to understand in order to appreciate why Steinbeck’s classic came under fire, but author Rick Wartzman devotes more time than is necessary to convey this point. He mentions that the book was also banned in other regions of the country, but rarely, if at all, states why these areas outside California found it necessary to do so.

The book's “heroine” is a Kern County librarian who was brave enough to write a stern letter to the Kern County Board – her employer – and managed to loan a good number of copies out to other libraries who struggled to keep up with the demand for “The Grapes of Wrath”, but beyond that, either Ms. Gretchen Knief did nothing of note or else the author chose not to mention it. From the available text, it is difficult to tell.

Thankfully, the author does spend some time discussing Steinbeck’s actions in California during the 1930s, but despite the title of this book, most of the focus is prior to the penning of his classic novel. Once again, this was interesting and necessary, but not in keeping with the title.

With all of that being said, though, this work told a detailed and compelling story of the laborers of that region and their struggles. These pages could serve as a good solid starting point for anyone wanting to learn of the era and the atmosphere at a tumultuous time in California’s history when the political and social stakes were high. For that much, this is a good read.

But as a book about the burning and banning of an American classic, this reference falls short with a title that is as deceptive as the land-owners it chronicles.