MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow has joined Bruce Springsteen, Garrison Keillor, Joan Baez and others as exemplars of the legacy of John Steinbeck, '23. In February the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University honored Maddow, '94, with its annual award for writers and artists whose work shares "Steinbeck's empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in the dignity of people who by circumstance are pushed to the fringes."
Maddow's book, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (Crown), was published in March. Starting her historical analysis with the Vietnam era, Maddow identifies how nearly constant war-making has betrayed the nation's founding ideals, incurred ruinous expenditures and eroded personal freedom in the name of national security.
