Against the Grain: Bombthrowing in the Fine American Tradition of Political Cartooning [Hardcover]

WILLARD "BILL" SANDERS began drawing while in grade school in his hometown of Springfield, Tennessee, and never stopped. Also a gifted athlete and musician, he was the starting quarterback at Western Kentucky University, where he met his future wife and played in a band. Drafted during the Ko­rean War, he became an Army journalist and taught himself political cartooning. After his service, he worked first at the Greensboro Daily News, then the Kansas City Star, and finally at the Milwaukee Journal. Sanders has joyfully skewered the powerful and the corrupt, and his cartoons have won many awards and have been syndicated to more than a hundred newspapers. Retired since 1991 -- but still drawing -- he lives with Joyce, his wife of 60-plus years, in Fort Myers, Florida. His current cartoons can be seen at sanderscartoon.blogspot.com.

Editorial cartoonists are an endangered species, and even in their heyday they were rare birds—at the top ranks of print journalism, only a few hundred such jobs existed worldwide in the 20th century. Yet those who wielded the drawing pen had enormous influence and popularity as they caricatured news events and newsmakers into "ink-drenched bombshells" that often said more than the accompanying news stories. Bill Sanders, working in a liberal tradition that stretches back to Thomas Nast and in more recent times includes Herblock, Oliphant, Feiffer, and Trudeau, began his career in the Eisenhower era and is still drawing in the age of Trump. In Against the Grain, he shares the upbringing and experiences that prepared him to inflict his opinions on the readers of the three major newspapers he worked for, the 100-plus papers he was syndicated in, and now, an internet channel.

Sanders's memoir is both personal and political. He reveals his small-town Southern roots, his athletic exploits and military service, his courtship and enduring marriage, and his life-long passion for music. T