This critical biography of Charles A. Dana, the 19th-century editor of the "New York Sun", blends the democratic ideal of the man with social and media history. Focusing on Dana's early years and political emergence, it analyses the "Sun" as the conscience and advocate for the working class.

In the first critical biography of Charles A. Dana in fifty years, Steele artfully weaves the great newspaper editor's vision, life, and work into the social and intellectual mood of the late nineteenth century. As one of the most influential publishers of the period, Dana defined and shaped the values of the working-class readers of the New York Sun. The Sun's motto, "It shines for all", captured Dana's uncompromising democratic ideal. Its pages exalted the proletariat's rhetoric and celebrated tolerance, ethnic diversity, and a broad commitment to social justice. Through a blend of social and media history, the author explores America's transition from a production-oriented society to a culture of consumption. Because of Dana's strong aversion to the consumerism that accompanied industrial capitalism, the Sun became both the conscience and the advocate for New York's working class. In the words of Joseph Pulitzer, Dana transformed the Sun into "the most piquant, entertaining, and without exception, the best newspaper in the world". At the core of the book is Dana's philosophy, his formative years and intellectual genesis at Brook Farm, his political emergence at the New York Tribune under Horace Greeley, and his alliances with other prominent figures of the day, including Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Walt Whitman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Steele includes unpublished photographs and draws upon Dana's personal correspondence from an array of manuscript collections never before cited.