David Hajdu a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a music critic for The Nation
Hajdu has published four books of nonfiction and one collection of essays:
- Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn (1996),
- Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña (2001)
- The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America (2008),
- Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture (2009),
- Love for Sale: Pop Music in America (fall 2016).
His most recent books are Adrianne Geffel, a “fictional work of nonfiction,” and A Revolution in Three Acts, a graphic history created in collaboration with the artist John Carey. He is currently working on a nonfiction book about artificial creativity, to be published by W. W. Norton.
Hajdu examines in depth the clash between children and their parents, between prewar and postwar standards. and the events that led to Fredrich Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent and the Comic Book Code Authority.
In this interview, Chad and David discuss his book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America which looks at the events surrounding the rise and almost fall of the comic industry in the 1950s.
Check out David at the following:
http://www.davidhajdu.com/ and follow him at @davidhajdu_
