Wormser, Richard 1933–

PERSONAL: Born 1933. Education: Bucknell University, graduated 1955.

ADDRESSES: Office—The New School, 66 W. 12th St., New York, NY 10011.

CAREER: Documentary filmmaker and writer of nonfiction for young adults. Also worked as a logger in the Pacific Northwest, a translator of French film treatments, a newspaper salesman in Paris, a longshoreman in London, and as a journalist for the Shamokin Citizen, Shamokin, PA. The New School, New York, NY, instructor.

MEMBER: PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS: Edgar Allan Poe Award, Mystery Writers of America, for best paperback original, 1973, for The Invader; Peabody Award for The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow; grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Public Broadcasting Service.

WRITINGS:

YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION; EXCEPT AS NOTED

The Invader (adult fiction), Fawcett Gold Medal (Greenwich, CT), 1972.

Pinkerton: America's First Private Eye, Walker (New York, NY), 1990.

Lifers: Learn the Truth at the Expense of Our Sorrow, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1991.

Countdown to Crisis: A Look at the Middle East, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1992.

Three Faces of Vietnam, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1993.

The Iron Horse: How Railroads Changed America, Walker (New York, NY), 1993.

Growing up in the Great Depression, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1994.

Hoboes: Wandering in America, 1870–1940, Walker (New York, NY), 1994.

Juveniles in Trouble, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

American Islam: Growing up Muslim in America, Walker (New York, NY), 1994.

The Titanic, Explorer Books, 1994.

American Childhoods: Three Centuries of Youth at Risk, Walker (New York, NY), 1996.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: The African-American Struggle against Discrimination, 1865–1954 (companion book to the Public Broadcasting Service [PBS] documentary), F. Watts (New York, NY), 1999, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Defending the Accused: Stories from the Courtroom, F. Watts (New York, NY), 2001.

To the Young Filmmaker: Conversations with Working Filmmakers, F. Watts (New York, NY), 2002.

Author and producer of nearly one hundred documentary films; series coproducer, writer, and director of one episode of The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, PBS.

SIDELIGHTS: Richard Wormser is a filmmaker-turned-writer who has published several works of nonfiction for young adult readers on such varied topics as teens at risk, Vietnam, hoboes, railways, American Islam, and even a biography of Allan Pinkerton, the first private investigator in the United States. Wormser's writings generally have a social slant, and he often chooses to feature those who, "having experienced the worst that life has to offer, are able to pick themselves up, tumble forward, and move out of the darkness of their lives into some light," as he explained in an essay for Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS).

Born in 1933, Wormser was a child of the Great Depression, and a great fan of baseball, partly because Babe Ruth lived only two blocks away from his home. Playing hooky to go to a Yankees game, he was later caught by his father and spent a "long period of confinement to my room without allowance," the author noted in SAAS. Reading came easily to the young Wormser, who devoured "comic books, boys' adventure stories of super-macho idiotic heroes who speak in near-grunts or single-syllable words," and of course baseball stories. Writing, however, was another matter; penmanship was a perennial problem for Wormser and he spent tortured hours in the second grade trying to master cursive handwriting. But it was not simply the mechanical aspect that bothered him; content proved difficult as well. "Writing remains hard for me," Wormser admitted in SAAS. "I never seem to say exactly what I want to say in the way I want to say it. The nuances of feelings I want to express elude me. Trying to capture the right word is like trying to catch butterflies."

Prep school was a trial for Wormser, who was smaller and less mature than the other boys. He turned to books during these years and soon graduated from "junk" reading to novels and history. His first years in college, however, almost extinguished this light, until a sociology course awoke intellectual passion in him. He also began reading the works of the Beat generation, including Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, which became Wormser's "Bible." Wormser explored America between his junior and senior years, riding Greyhound buses and talking to everyone he met. In California he stayed with friends for a time, taking odd jobs, then traveled on to the Southwest and Denver, where he drove a dealer's car to Seattle. During these travels he first came into contact with that mobile class of itinerant workers, the hoboes who hitchhiked and rode the rails from one job to the next. The experience of meeting these men would later come to fruition in a book on hoboes.

In Washington state Wormser worked for a time as a choker setter on a logging crew, one of the most dangerous jobs in the woods. Once back at school, he graduated in 1955, then went on to law school, which he ultimately quit, and then to graduate school. In 1959 he left for Paris, where he intended to pursue his doctorate at the Sorbonne; he attended the "school of life" in that city, staying on for two years during the turbulent era of the Algerian-French conflict. In Paris he met some of the Beat poets and writers such as Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs and began his own attempts at writing.

Returning to the United States in 1961, Wormser took a job at a small weekly newspaper in Pennsylvania, where he covered everything from city politics to the coal mines that employed most of the local population. This work provided him with valuable experience in journalism and photography, and as the 1960s got into full swing, he began to discover his own creative voice. Visiting an institution for retarded children in Pennsylvania, he decided that the only way he could do justice to the story of such children was by making a documentary film about them. He had never made a film nor shot footage, but managed to find funding and learned as he went along. Once finished, his first film won a number of awards. He also helped to make a film about the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago when the police force literally ran riot against demonstrators. Suddenly Wormser saw what he wanted to do with film: to make movies about "the past and present struggles of people to win the political, civil, and human rights denied them by their fellow Americans, politicians, police, and courts," as the author commented in SAAS.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Wormser traveled far and wide, documenting lives throughout the Middle East and Egypt as well as in the United States. As the 1990s approached, and Yippie—"those opposed to the killing in Vietnam"—was replaced by Yuppie—"those in favor of making a killing on Wall Street"—Wormser found it increasingly difficult to produce his social and political documentaries, and turned to writing instead. His first title resulted from a failed film project about the life of Allan Pinkerton, the founder of the Pinkerton Agency, whose name is often associated with strike breaking. Wormser discovered, however, that far from being a social conservative and tool of the ruling class, Pinker-ton was a labor radical in his native Scotland and had to immigrate to the United States to avoid arrest. A staunch abolitionist, Pinkerton helped slaves escape from the South and put his new agency at the service of the Union during the Civil War.

In a review for the School Library Journal, Jacqueline Elsner described Wormser's Pinkerton: America's First Private Eye, as an account "told with exciting pacing and engrossing anecdotes." Elsner concluded that "readers are treated to a fast-paced, absorbing look at this complex, unique man and to a vivid view of U.S. history during his lifetime." Leone McDermott, writing in Booklist, noted that an "intriguing subject, lively prose, and in-depth analysis combine to make this a first-rate biography." Concluding a review for Voice of Youth Advocates, Pat Costello wrote that "history comes alive through the author's efforts and it is just this effect which should encourage more young people to sample the nonfiction genre."

Such a warm critical reception encouraged Wormser to continue with YA nonfiction. In SAAS Wormser wrote that he realized that "writing for the young adult market allows me to write about subjects I care about, and for which there is no longer a strong support for [in] documentary films…. Perhaps through my books I can reach an audience that is not yet indifferent to the plight of America's dispossessed—those for whom society seems to have no place."

Wormser's next book deals with crime and young people at risk. After a year's research at the East Jersey State Prison in New Jersey, and interviewing four men sentenced to life imprisonment, Wormser penned Lifers: Learn the Truth at the Expense of Our Sorrow. The book, rather than trying to scare adolescents away from a life of crime, simply presents the facts about life inside prisons. Wormser documents how these "lifers" got into trouble on the outside and why, and also looks at what impact prison has on their lives. "This includes graphic language and a tough, no-nonsense treatment … to demonstrate the realities and brutalities of life in a maximum security facility," remarked Celia A. Huffman in a School Library Journal review. Booklist commentator Candace Smith called the book a "grim but perceptive look at the real horrors of prison—monotony, boredom, despair, and wasted lives."

In a similar vein are Wormser's Juveniles in Trouble and American Childhoods: Three Centuries of Youth at Risk, both dedicated to investigations of troubled and difficult adolescence, historical and contemporary. In Juveniles in Trouble, Wormser "describes the lives of young people who run away from home and live on the streets, who are addicted to drugs, who are in gangs, and who commit crimes," observed School Library Journal contributor Jacqueline Rose. Jeanne Triner commented in Booklist that "teens need more hard-hitting, factual information like this to help them understand how important the choices they make today are going to be for the rest of their lives."

In American Childhoods, Wormser does much the same for the historical view of adolescence, showing the grim realities of child labor and enforced military servitude, among other injustices. Deborah Stevenson, reviewing the book in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, commented that Wormser "pays particularly close attention to those groups that fared least well—immigrants, minorities, and the poor—and finishes each chapter with an extensive discussion of the contemporary situation."

Wormser has also turned his hand to historical issues, including the Vietnam conflict in Three Faces of Vietnam, the effect of railroads on America in The Iron Horse, the Great Depression in Growing up in the Great Depression, and religion in America in American Islam: Growing up Muslim in America. It is Wormser's gift to be able to approach his subjects with an editorial slant as well as come at them from a new and different angle. In Three Faces of Vietnam, for example, he presents the war "through the eyes of antiwar protestors, American GIs, and the Vietnamese people," according to Mary Mueller in the School Library Journal, "attempting to capture the feelings and attitudes of that era." Booklist critic Sheilamae O'Hara concluded that Wormser's book "does effectively show the tragic marks the war left on both the Vietnamese and Americans." Of Wormser's book, The Iron Horse, a Publishers Weekly critic noted that it "provides an evenhanded history of the growth and impact of the railroads in 19th-century America," while Allison Rogers Hutchison declared in the Voice of Youth Advocates that "this is such a good read for a nonfiction YA title that it comes highly recommended for any YA collection."

Wormser did not forget the effect that meeting hoboes and tramps had on him when he was a young man. In 1994 he wrote a book documenting their lives that spans seventy years of American history. His Hoboes: Wandering in America, 1870–1940 focuses on the rules, literature, jokes, modes of life, customs, and politics of this class of wandering workers, similar to today's itinerant laborers. Hazel Rochman noted in a Booklist review that while "Wormser evokes the adventure of the hobo journey, the romance of the rugged individual … he's frank about the brutal reality of living on the edge in hard times—the hunger, the viciousness, the 'jungle' warfare." A Kirkus Reviews contributor called that same book an "engaging account of the penurious workers who crisscrossed America as 'internal refugees' from the Industrial Revolution," and concluded by calling Wormser's work "informative and fascinating."

Wormser wrote The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: The African-American Struggle against Discrimination, 1865–1954, the companion book to the PBS documentary series he co-produced. The volume, which contains more than one hundred illustrations and images, is a history of legal segregation from the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. Wormser draws on the oral histories of people who experienced Klan violence, lynchings, and other brutalities, people who were soldiers, workers, sharecroppers, and children. He writes of the evolution of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and of the black leaders, including W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, who stood up for the rights of ordinary people.

In Defending the Accused: Stories from the Courtroom, Wormser provides an understanding of what defense attorneys do and why they choose to defend people they sometimes know are guilty. Booklist contributor Roger Leslie concluded that "Wormser comes as close as possible to answering that familiar loaded question." He focuses on six cases and considers the humanity of the defendants accused of heinous crimes, including murder and rape. School Library Journal reviewer Victoria Kidd called this book for the young adult reader "a solid introduction to the subject."

The filmmaker offers career guidance in To the Young Filmmaker: Conversations with Working Filmmakers. Wormser is aware of the impression he wants to create; as with his films, he is seeking in his books to give voice to the silent in society, to illuminate today's concerns by examining yesterday's failures and successes. "I still write for young people," Wormser concluded in SAAS, "finding that the ideas and opinions of most adults are hopelessly set in concrete and are all but impossible to break through. In many young people, the concrete, though hardening, has not yet solidified in their brains. Some are still open to new experiences, willing to suspend judgment until they have more understanding of issues, and listen to different sides. So I write for those who can make a difference in the world, can change it, and help make it a place where all people can have a chance to live decent and productive lives."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Something about the Author Autobiography Series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 26, 1998.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 1991, Leone McDermott, review of Pinkerton: America's First Private Eye, p. 920; September 15, 1991, Candace Smith, review of Lifers: Learn the Truth at the Expense of Our Sorrow, p. 140; February 15, 1994, Sheilamae O'Hara, review of Three Faces of Vietnam, p. 1070; May 15, 1994, Jeanne Triner, review of Juveniles in Trouble, p. 1673; June 1, 1994, Hazel Rochman, review of Hoboes: Wandering in America, 1870–1940, p. 1794; February 15, 2000, Hazel Rochman, review of The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, July, 2001, Roger Leslie, review of Defending the Accused: Stories from the Courtroom, p. 1999; February 15, 2003, Vernon Ford, review of The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, p. 1042.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, October, 1996, Deborah Stevenson, review of American Childhoods: Three Centuries of Youth at Risk, p. 81.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 1994, review of Hoboes, p. 710.

Library Journal, September, 2002, Tim Wadham, review of To the Young Filmmaker: Conversations with Working Filmmakers, p. 255.

School Library Journal, December, 1990, Jacqueline Elsner, review of Pinkerton, p. 120; December, 1991, Celia A. Huffman, review of Lifers, p. 147; January, 1994, Mary Mueller, review of Three Faces of Vietnam, p. 143; June, 1994, Jacqueline Rose, review of Juveniles in Trouble, p. 158; August, 2001, Victoria Kidd, review of Defending the Accused, p. 207.

Social Education, May, 2001, D.C. Vlaskamp, review of The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, p. 217.

Voice of Youth Advocates, December, 1990, Pat Costello, review of Pinkerton, pp. 323-324; April, 1994, Allison Rogers Hutchison, review of Three Faces of Vietnam, p. 55.