Westbrook Pegler had two careers, one as a well-known sportswriter and one as a famous, caustic, confrontational, Pulitzer Prize-winning political journalist. Although both careers have been essentially forgotten, Pegler achieved notable success in each. His career as a political journalist brought him fame and controversy. It ended with a sensational libel suit against him, which he lost. His eventual neglect, however, was probably less because of Pegler's vituperative style than because of his right-wing politics. Indeed, Pegler's last major job was writing for the John Birch Society's American Opinion magazine, which historian Clarence B. Carson, in A Basic History of the United States (1986), has called "almost certainly the glossiest of conservative journals, and definitely one of the hardest hitting." Even that journal severed ties with Pegler almost at the beginning.

Pegler's first career as a sportswriter was not only successful, but it influenced him at every stage of...