What a fascinating life Garet Garrett lived! Journalist, novelist, anti-New Deal writer, and then prophet of decline in the 1950s, no one's prose and thought combined to create such a rich combination of toughness and insight. He was a great champion of liberty, and fabulous stylist. He warned of the 1929 crash, explained the depression, and no one better captured the essence of the FDR revolution than this one man in his great monograph People's Pottage.
Unsanctioned Voice is the first biography of this amazing writer. Bruce Ramsey explores Garrett’s life and work as reflected in his novels and pamphlets and in dozens of essays in the Saturday Evening Post, the New York Times and other publications. He covers his humble background, his frenzied early career, his near-death in a speakeasy shootout, his lone and courageous fight against the New Deal, his interesting correspondence and travels with Rose Wilder Lane, and more.
In the mainstream journalism of his day, Garrett was the most eloquent enemy of the state and a champion of commercial society. Garrett paid the price for it. He was specifically targeted by FDR.
Unsanctioned Voice is the story of a writer who found himself on the losing side of a national debate about the limits of government—a debate that is even more crucial today.
Ramsey himself writes with a similar flair, unearthing previously unknown details about who he was and how he lived. This biography should go a long way toward bringing back his name into the lexicon of great American essayists.
Old Right novelist and journalist Garet Garrett was one of the 20th century’s great men of letters. Yet his life and work have been largely forgotten, just when his defense of peace and freedom is needed most. All hail Bruce Ramsey and Caxton Press for helping restore him, especially with this new biography. - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., Ludwig von Mises Institute