Born into Gilded Age wealth in San Francisco in 1866, Lincoln Steffens grew up in a Sacramento mansion that later became the California governor's mansion, yet developed a lifelong resistance to authority, crystallized by 22 days of solitary confinement at a military academy. This deep dive follows his path from privileged rebel to pioneering investigative journalist.

As an editor at McClure's, he wrote The Shame of the Cities and The Traitor State, blaming complacent citizens rather than only corrupt bosses. Exhausted by reform's failures, he embraced revolution, visited Soviet Russia in 1919, and declared he had seen the future and it works, before souring on the experiment and writing his best-selling 1931 autobiography.

• How solitary confinement at St. Matthew's shaped his anti-authoritarian worldview
• His method of pro ...