Brann and the Iconoclast

“They wouldn’t let him rest—even in his grave.” Thus Charles Carver opens his story of the climactic years of a journalist who had poured out such blazing prose that readers from England to Hawaii mourned his murder.

The impact of William Cowper Brann’s Iconoclast upon the town of Waco, Texas, in the 1890’s was like a rocket burst in a quiet sky. Rebelling against Victorian hypocrisy, the newspaperman took aim at organized virtue, exemplified for him by Baylor University and other Baptist organizations.

Dr. Roy Bedichek, noted author and naturalist, knew Brann, and after reading this book in manuscript said, “I am at once delighted and disappointed: disappointed to find my teen-age hero reduced to size... delighted with the art of the biographer.... It has genuine literary excellence... is a chapter in the history of the publishing business in Texas that needs to be put into print....”