Shaking the foundations: 200 years of investigative journalism in America

Striking Through the Mask / Bruce Shapiro

Invention of Exposure: 1798-1900

Benjamin Franklin Bache: "A Calm Observer" from the Philadelphia Aurora and General Advertiser (1795)

John Barber: From A History of the Amistad Captives (1840)

Herman Melville: "Flogging Through the Fleet" from White-Jacket (1850)

Henry Adams: From Chapters of Erie (1872)

New York Times: "More Ring Villainy: Gigantic Frauds in the Rental of Armories" (1871)

John Swinton: "The New Slave Trade" from John Swinton's Paper (1884)

Nellie Bly: "Choking and Beating Patients" from Ten Days in a Madhouse (1887)

Jacob Riis: "Pauperism in the Tenements" from How the Other Half Lives (1890)

Muckrakers and the Era of Reform: 1900-1920

Lincoln Steffens: "The Shame of Minneapolis: The Rescue and Redemption of a City That Was Sold Out" from McClure's Magazine (1903)

Ida Tarbell: "The Oil War of 1872" from The History of Standard Oil (1903)

Upton Sinclair: "The Condemned-Meat Industry: A Reply to Mr. J Ogden Armour" from Everybody's Magazine (1908)

Factories, Fields, and Fascists: Investigative Journalism's Forgotten Decades, 1920-1960

Vera Connolly: "Cry of a Broken People: A Story of Injustice and Cruelty that is as Terrible as it is True" from Good Housekeeping (1929)

Drew Pearson: "The Man Who Stayed Too Long" from Washington Merry-Go-Round (1931)

Carey McWilliams: "The Rise of Farm Fascism" from Factories in the Field (1939)

George Seldes: "The Suppressed Tobacco Story" from In Fact (1941)

Lowell L. Leake and PM: "Hitler Gets Millions for War Chest Through Links with American Firms" from PM (1941)

John Bartlow Martin: "The Blast in Centralia No. 5: A Mine Disaster No One Stopped" from Harper's Magazine (1948)

Marvel Cooke: "The Bronx Slave Market" Parts I, II, and III from the New York Compass (1950)

Stetson Kennedy: "The Klavaliers Ride to a Fall" from The Klan Unmasked (1954)

Fred J. Cook: From "The Big Ones Get Away" from The Nation (1958)

Ralph Nader: "The Safe Car You Can't Buy," from The Nation (1959)

Force to be Reckoned With: 1960-1990

Frank Donner: From "Anatomy of a Hate Group" from The Un-Americans (1962)

Rachel Carson: "And No Birds Sing" from Silent Spring (1962)

I.F. Stone: "All We Really Know is that We Fired the First Shots" from I.F. Stone's Weekly (1968)

Robert Scheer, Warren Hinckle, and Sol Stern: "The University on the Make" from Ramparts (1966)

Seymour Hersh: "The My Lai Massacre" from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1969)

Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith: "Vast Review of War Took a Year" from the New York Times (1971)

Jack Anderson: "Secret Memo Bares Mitchell-ITT Move," Kleindienst Accused in ITT Case," and "Contradictions Cited in ITT Case" from the Washington Post (1972)

Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein: "Spy Funds Linked to GOP Aides" and "Mitchell Controlled Secret GOP Fund" from the Washington Post (1972)

Jessica Mitford: "The Prison Business" from Kind and Usual Punishment (1973)

Mark Dowie, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Stephen Minkin: "Corporate Crime of the Century" from Mother Jones (1979)

Jonathan Kwitny: "Steinman" from Vicious Circles: The Mafia and the Marketplace (1979)

Penny Lernoux: "Villains Afoot" from Cry of the People (1980)

Allan Nairn: "Behind the Death Squads" from The Progressive (1984)

Themes for a New Century: 1990-2000

Roy Gutman: "Death Camp Horrors" from Newsday (1993)

Kenneth Armstrong and Steve Mills: "Death Row Justice Derailed" from the Chicago Tribune (1999)

William Greider: "These Dark Satanic Mills" from One World, Ready or Not (1997).