I'm really proud of this work and I hope you'll consider reading it. If you do, please let me know as I'd love to hear what others think of it!

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With its support for the liberal agenda, Herblock’s work affords a unique lens through which to interpret and understand the shifts and contours of 20th-century American political culture, from the postwar period through the civil rights era into the Nixon presidency.

Block was also fully committed to the idea that a healthy democracy relied on a free and vibrant press that would help protect against those who would seek to undermine American values for their own benefit. With staff cartoonists especially vulnerable to the wave of cost-cutting afflicting so many newspapers over the last decade, Block’s cartoons remind us how powerful a tool they can be in holding those in power accountable to the public.

If you’re interested in seeing examples of his cartoons, well buy my book (it reproduces forty cartoons!), but his original art and papers are located at the Library of Congress, which hosts a permanent revolving exhibit of his work https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/herblock-gallery/herblock-looks-at-1972.html

Block is arguably most famous for the numerous cartoons he drew responding to what he saw as the smear politics of two Republicans: Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon.

Long an opponent of the methods used by various congressional committees to root out alleged communists from American life, his 1950 responding to the tactics of Joseph McCarthy popularized the word McCarthyism as a short-hand for political witch hunts.

His depiction of Nixon as a sewer-dwelling thug complete with heavy five o’clock shadow and drooping jowls became so inseparable in people’s minds with the real Nixon that for much of his political career he was obsessed with “erasing the Herblock image.”

But there was much more to Block’s work than standing against these two politicians and Drawing Liberalism also explores how he engaged with issues such as civil rights and civil liberties, the emergence of a new conservative movement, and the election of 1968.

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