Philip L. Fradkin

Wallace Stegner and the American West
• “Respectful of his subject but never worshipful, Fradkin has given us our first full critical portrait of the man and his protean career.” Hampton Sides, Men’s Vogue

• “Author of many books on the American West, western editor of Audubon magazine and a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Philip L. Fradkin has a resume that seems to suit him perfectly to write the life of that most Western of literary figures, Wallace Stegner. And after reading ‘Wallace Stegner and the American West,’ it is clear that this is an ideal match between biographer and subject.” Front page, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review (A “Lit Picks” choice of Book Review editors)

• “As Fradkin notes in this astute biography, it was a miracle that he didn’t write pulp westerns. Instead, Stegner took as his subject the failure of his father’s homestead, built on denial of the most fundamental Western reality: drought.” The New Yorker

• “Fradkin’s dynamic and probing portrait of Stegner brilliantly combines literary and environmental history, and provides a fresh and telling perspective on the rampant development of the arid West, and Stegner's prophetic warnings of the complex consequences.” Booklist

• “Stegner disliked the epithet ‘dean of Western writers,’ but many authors, readers and environmentalists are grateful he earned it. Fradkin’s clear-eyed biography is another occasion for their gratitude.” Los Angeles Times Book Review

• “That Fradkin judges Stegner fairly throughout pleases, but the book's most welcome moments come when he excerpts Stegner's sharp descriptions of the West.” Philadelphia Inquirer

• “Overall, this is an engaging, holistic, recounting of a rich, rough-and-tumble literary life, anchored in the rugged Western terrain, a fast-vanishing wilderness that Stegner would say we must preserve for our very sanitary, a landscape crucial to our human ‘geography of hope.’”BookPage

• “An absorbing biography.” Outside

• “ ‘Wallace Stegner and the American West’ is a solid and informative study of the roots and the course of a literary life.” New York Post

• “An excellent guide to Stegner’s long, illustrious and varied careers.” Seattle Times

• “The complexity of this important figure is finally captured in a remarkable new biography by Philip L. Fradkin. . . . Fradkin brings a novelist’s eye to this well-told life story.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer

• “It’s easy to fall into the trap of hagiography when writing about a high achiever of exemplary character. Reality is always more complicated and interesting, however, and Philip L. Fradkin is able to push past the plaudits in Wallace Stegner and the American West and get closer to the main.” The Oregonian

• “Fradkin's book provides the comprehensive story of Stegner's achievements with inclusiveness and grace.” Rocky Mountain News

• “Because Stegner, whatever else, was blessed with the gift for beautiful writing, it is only fair that his biography be equally well-written. With this classy, well-balanced book, Fradkin has outdone himself, presenting Stegner as the eminent scholar and writer he was, but also as a flawed human being who made mistakes.” Deseret News

The Knopf cataogue description follows:

Wallace Stegner was the premier chronicler of the twentieth century Western American experience, and his novels, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angle of Repose and the National Book Award-winning The Spectator Bird, brought the life and landscapes of the West to national and international attention. But in this illuminating biography, Philip L. Fradkin goes beyond Stegner’s iconic literary status to give us, as well, the influential teacher and visionary conservationist, the man for whom the preservation and integrity of place was as important as his ability to render its qualities and character in his brilliantly crafted fiction and nonfiction.

We learn of Stegner’s hardscrabble youth on the Canadian frontier and in Utah. We watch as he makes a home with his wife Mary in the foothills of Palo Alto, whose rapid development into Silicon Valley he fights tirelessly along with opposing dams on the Colorado River. Here are his years at the head of the Stanford Creative Writing Program, where his students included Ken Kesey, Edward Abbey, Robert Stone, and Wendell Berry. And here too is the full story of the accusations of plagiarism which followed the publication of Angle of Repose.

Rich in personal and literary detail, and in the sensual description of the country that Stegner loved and that shaped both his work and his life—this is the definitive biography of one of the most acclaimed and admired writers, teachers, and conservationists of our time.

Biography/ History
6 ¼ x 9 ¼
400 pages, 31 b/w photos
Available from Knopf in January 2008
ISBN-13/EAN: 978-1-4000-4391-0 • 1-4000-4391-3
$27.50 (Canada: $35.00)

California, the Golden Coast

(All reviews of this book were lost fifteen years after publication in a house fire. Although out-of-print, portions of the book are contained in Wanderings of an Environmental Journalist.

A River No More: The Colorado River and the West

"What Mr. Fradkin's book does is look illusion in the eye until it blinks. A River No More makes a statement of the utmost importance and gravity." Wallace Stegner, The New Republic

“A River No More is the most comprehensive book we have had or are ever likely to have on the Colorado River—a portrait with a message. We had better listen to it.” T.H Watkins, San Francisco Chronicle Review

"Massively researched and qite well written, it may change the way you look at rivers."Christian Science Monitor

"Assimilating scores of colorful tributary anecdotes, yet maintaining a clear forward thrust, the book itself takes on the form of a variegated, wonderful river." Washington Post Book World

Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy

"In a searing indictment of official indifference both to human life and basic principles, Philip Fradkin has written a meticulously documented report about how this outrage was allowed to happen. Fallout provides important lessons that we ignore at our peril." Washington Post Book World, (front page review)

“Philip Fradkin's carefully researched book is a welcome addition to the growing body of work describing an atmospheric testing program so aggressive that it amounted to nothing less than an undeclared domestic nuclear war.” The New York Times Book Review

"Dispassionate in its strict adherence to testimony and evidence, compelling, lucid and a vital contribution to American history, Fradkin's book with its documentation is unassailable."
David Perlman, science editor, San Francisco Chronicle Review

"An expose that should create a firestorm of controversy and that deserves a wide audience." Starred review, Kirkus Reviews

Sagebrush Country: Land and the American West

"A compelling portrait of a spare and lovely land with limited resources that can in no way accomodate the demands being placed on it." Seattle Times

"He ties the history of Sagebrush Country together with prodigious research and on-the-scene narrative to frame the contemporary situation in the rounded light of perspective. In the land of many uses and abuses, his work delivers understanding over blame. That's virgin territory for the West." Bloomsbury Review

"Fradkin is not a wild-eyed environmentalist, nor is he anti-development. His is a reasoned approach in a forum that allows very little reason to intrude on emotional issues." Denver Post

Wanderings of an Environmental Journalist: In Alaska and the American West

"Philip Fradkin's essays offer a sobering, articulate view of specific environmental concerns in the West, most of which——as shown by an updating epilogue——have not improved in the interim. . . . At times, the prescience of Fradkin's observations is stunning." Los Angeles Times Review

"When you're right, you're right, and when Philip Fradkin worked for the Los Angeles Times as that paper's first environmental reporter from 1970-1975, and for Audubon from 1976-1981 as its first western editor, he ofted batted 1,000." Betsy Marston, editor, High Country News

"Fradkin's engaging style and insights into ongoing issues—the 'alienation' of Native Americans from their lands, overcrowded in the West, the constant threat of fire in California—make this a rewarding collection for concerned readers." Publishers Weekly

"At times, the prescience of Fradkin's observations is stunning." Kirkus Reviews

The Seven States of California: A Natural and Human History

"Part Baedeker, part historical tract and part personal witness, a superb, warts-and-all introduction to the nation's most populous, polyglot and physically varied state." San Francisco Chronicle Review, front page

"Great reading. While many of us bumble along in the buggles of our local expresso cart and occasional car stereo theft, Fradkin experiences our worst public events as the very stuff of life. This lends his writing a stirring urgency." Daniel Duane, Los Angeles Times

"Fascinating, intimate, and readable in the extreme." Kirkus Reviews

Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West
"The deeply familiar image of a stagecoach and a team of six horses clattering over a raw landscape is both a shimmering icon of Western myth and legend and the carefully tended trademark of a bank. For precisely that reason, 'Stageocach' by Philip L. Fradkin can be approached as both a colorful work of frontier history and a cool-headed corporate biography." Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A swashbuckling account of Wells Fargo's early mail and express delivery service." Publisher's Weekly

"A great story of brave spirits in the American West, and of entrepreneurial spirit as well." Wall Street Journal

"This lively history of the express company that became synonymous with communication on the American frontier is as much a story of corporate machinations back East as it is of adventure in the West." London Financial Times

Magnitude 8: Earthquakes and Life Along the San Andreas Fault
(Volume I in the Earthquake Trilogy)

"The most thoroughly researched volume available for a lay audience about the San Andreas Fault." San Jose Mercury News

"Fradkin captures the awesome power and monstrous consequences of earthquakes in this elegant, at times breathtaking, environmental history of the dangers of place." Kirkus Reviews

"A fascinating and at times riveting yarn about one of the State's—and the Earth's—most powerful and mysterious forces." San Francisco Chronicle Review

Wildest Alaska: Journeys of Great Peril in Lituya Bay
(Volume II in the Earthquake Trilogy)

"No other book about Alaska so thoroughly documents this strange, powerful corner of the Great Land and the haunted quality permeating many of its most beautiful landscapes." Booklist

"Fradkin tells the story with great charm, creating an image of a place that mixes curses with blessings." London Sunday Times

“Reader beware: Fradkin's history of sinisterly beautiful Lituya Bay is to Alaska travelogues as Kubrick's ‘The Shining’ is to hotel commercials. After finishing this unnerving tale of Tlingit monsters, kilometer-high waves, mystery bears and inexplicable murders, I looked under my bed to make sure the Land Otter Man wasn't lurking there. A gothic tour de force by America's finest environmental journalist.” Mike Davis, author of the Ecology of Fear and Late Victorian Holocausts.

The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself
(Volume III in the Earthquake Trilogy)

“Indeed, for all its horrific incidents, The Great Earthquake proves an inspiring, even endearing book, full of colorful anecdotes and charming details, encyclopedic in scope and powerfully evocative of San Francisco in its golden age. The panorama Fradkin offers the reader is so sweeping and so vivid that one might be tempted to call his book cinematic, were it not for the fact that all those disaster movies seem so bland by comparison.” Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Book Review>

"None of the standard histories of the 1906 disaster are likely to survive the exemplary jolt of Philip Fradkin's remarkable new research." Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear

"Fradkin's account starts out as an environmental history but evolves into a parable about human response to cataclysm." The New Yorker

"And yet New Orleans's ongoing travails remind readers that to understand disaster we must look beyond spectacle, no matter how dramatic or gruesome, and focus our gaze instead on politics. Fradkin, to his credit, understands this. . . . So it is that Fradkin's work is the most illuminating in these seasons of catastrophe. His book demonstrates that the earthquake and fires created winners and losers, that the tragedy was manipulated for political gain——and, more broadly, that disasters, so often mislabeled 'natural,' are really a horrible outgrowth of the most human concerns: politics." The Nation

"The rich narrative that flows from Fradkin's research is essentially a story of the past, but the manipulation and abuse of power——the book's principal theme——also provides a caution for the future." Sacramento Bee

"It is a blockbuster. . . . Fradkin came up with—nearly 100 years after the event—the true story of how San Franciscans responded to the challenges of April 1906." Kevin Starr, author and former California State Librarian, San Francisco Examiner