Miriam Pawel is an award-winning reporter and editor who spent twenty-five years working for Newsday and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement. Pawel was recently an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow and a John Jacobs Fellow at the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. In her latest book, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography (Bloomsbury Press), Pawel offers a searching, yet empathetic portrayal of Cesar Chavez, who founded a labor union, launched a movement, and inspired a generation. He rose from migrant worker to national icon, becoming one of the great charismatic leaders of the 20th century. Two decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino leader in US history. Yet his life story has been told only in hagiography-until now. Drawing on thousands of documents and scores of interviews, this biography deepens our understanding of one of Chavez’s most salient qualities: his profound humanity.
