Jessica Mitford and Me

Jessica Mitford on After Dark, August, 1998.

I did not know Jessica Mitford— who was dubbed “the Queen of the Muckrakers”– for long, but I knew her well. In the 1990s, shortly before my biography of Abbie Hoffman was published I decided that I wanted to write a biography of “Decca,” as she was known. I had met her in 1984 when I invited her to speak in a lecture series at Sonoma State University (SSU) devoted to George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. I remember that she talked in a large...