David Hajdu

“The first mission of the funny pages was to convoke the lower classes.”

David Hajdu is the author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn (1996) and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña (2001), both of which were named finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He writes a monthly column for The New Republic on music and popular culture, and has written for The American Scholar, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New Times Book Review, and Vanity Fair, among other publications.

He has previously taught at the University of Chicago and Syracuse University, and is now a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in Manhattan with his family.

See what others are saying:

The Ten-Cent Plague, By Jennifer Reese. Entertainment Weekly, Mar 14, 2008

You may also find the following recent articles of interest: (courtesy of the Comics Research Bibliography)

Baker, R.C. 2008.
The Ten-Cent Plague: Weird tales, indeed; David Hajdu's History of the Comic-Book Panic.
Village Voice, March 18, 2008

Bartilucci, Vinnie. 2008.
David Hajdu On The Ten Cent Plague [interview]
Newsarama, March 20, 2008

Menand, Louis. 2008.
The Horror: Congress investigates the comics [Hajdu's Ten-Cent Plague:
The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America].
New Yorker.com, March 31, 2008

Also from ComicMix.com:

Van Jensen, March 26, 2008
Review: 'The Ten-Cent Plague' by David Hajdu.