Scott Martelle
journalist/author


Some of my
journalism

ARTICLE:
There's more to Gilroy than garlic
ARTICLE:
On singer-songwriter Peter Case
REVIEW:
On Jon Clinch's Kings of the Earth
ARTICLE:
On anthropologist Jennifer Perry, and California's Channel Islands
ARTICLE:
A look at political polemics in hardcover
REVIEW:
Of Scott Turow's Innocent for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer
ARTICLE:
Interview piece with Scott Turow
Op-Ed piece
On Ludlow, and the West Virginia mine tragedy (for the LA Times)
ARTICLE:
On Exene Cervenka for Orange Coast
ARTICLE:
On Mark Twain's image problem
ARTICLE:
Profile of Elif Batuman for Publishers Weekly
ARTICLE:
On Terry Teachout and Pops, his new bio of Louis Armstrong.
ARTICLE:
A look in the LA Times at the launch of Sarah Palin's memoir.
REVIEW:
On The Fourth Part of the World, a history of how America got it's name, in The Washington Post
ARTICLE:
On Barbara Demick's forthcoming Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
ARTICLE:
Short profile of critic Terry Teachout on his forthcoming bio of Louis Armstrong.
REVIEW:
Kazuo Ishiguro's short story collection, Nocturnes.
ARTICLE:
On Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code
ARTICLE:
"Harry Helling's Uncertain Voyage"
ARTICLE:
Profile of author Maile Meloy.
TRAVEL:
On AAA baseball in Fresno, the budget alternative to the bigs.
REVIEW:
Pat Conroy's South of Broad, not up to his full narrative power.
ARTICLE:
Fun piece on a yacht club without a yacht, a dock or, nowadays, a clubhouse.
BOOK REVIEW:
Of Nick Reding's Methland, exploring the devastating effects of meth on small-town America.
BOOK REVIEW:
Another version of the Reding review, this in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
TRAVEL:
A road trip up the California coast -- from brewpub to brewpub.
BOOK REVIEW:
Elizabeth Edwards' Resilience in the LA Times.
BOOK REVIEW:
Of J. Robert Lennon's Castle in the LA Times.
ARTICLE:
Short interview/profile of Reza Aslan, author of No God But God and How To Win A Cosmic War.
ARTICLE:
On Barry Rillera, former Righteous Brothers guitar player who shared a secret with The Beatles.
BOOK REVIEW:
Ifill and Asim books on Obama, race and politics.
ARTICLE:
On Detroit's Focus:HOPE
TRAVEL:
"It was cool outside. The rain had stopped, but the dampness seeped into our bones with the chill of death."
TRAVEL:
A piece on eco-friendly travel to San Diego.
TRAVEL:
Advancing the annual Hatch, N. Mex., chili festival.
ARTICLE:
An Hour Detroit piece on bipolar disorder and Heinz Prechter's suicide.
BOOK REVIEW:
Rick Wartzman's book on the burning of The Grapes of Wrath.
PROFILE:
Long-shot presidential contender Duncan Hunter.
TRAVEL:
On the semi-annual opening of the Trinity site - where the first atomic bomb was detonated

Readings

Some reviews

This is a PDF file. Another round up review of several books that includes some nice praise -- and a valid critique -- of Blood Passion (3.6MB)
A review-essay in The New Yorker in January 2009 about another Ludlow-related book had some nice things to say about Blood Passion, calling it a "lively journalistic accounting." The essay is here

"Blood Passion” captures the tension and distrust between the two sides, sometimes reading with the ferocity of a Martin Scorsese movie. There are broad-daylight murders, beatings with canes, bodies left on train tracks and gun butts upside the head. Bullets rip through abdomens, strike a jaw, sever a spinal column. Another “tore off a large piece of [a] boy’s skull and brain, killing him instantly.” Los Angeles Times Book Review

"The events surrounding what came to be known as the Ludlow Massacre were less about 'the romantic notion of the resilience of the union men and women in the face of oppression,' and more about class distinctions played out against the incidental backdrop of an ugly strike, according to journalist Scott Martelle in an impressive new book about the conflict." Read the full full review in the Rocky Mountain News.


"Martelle's excellent book captures it with a journalist's flair for narrative and a historian's penchant for making the necessary inferences where they belong: on the page for all to see." Full review in San Francisco Chronicle.

"Martelle tells [the story] with exceptional skill and delicious detail. He has a feel for the terrain and has managed to reconstruct the lives of many of the actors, large and small. We learn much about the company’s gouging of its workers and of the appalling working conditions belowground. While his sympathies are obvious, however, Martelle makes it clear that this was no melodrama. Both sides played hardball, but in these closing years of the Progressive Era that was the only game around." Click here for the full review for the History Book Club.

"Martelle, a veteran LA Times journalist, spends little ink editorializing the reasons for the omission of this war from the annals of American history. Rather, he has poured his prodigious storytelling ability into creating a concise and historically accurate chronology of this fight." NaturalNews.com

Some coverage


The New West online news site covered the reading at the Boulder Bookstore.

Interview with journalist and historian Jon Wiener on Los Angeles station KPFK 90.7 (click through to the archives; the show ran Wednesday Sept. 26).

The Rocky Talk blogsite of the Rocky Mountain News hosted me for an online chat with Mark Wolf while I was in town.

Interview on Colorado Matters, with host Dan Meyers.