Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford
The 2026 Goldsmith Trade Book Award honors Carla Kaplan, a professor at Northeastern University, for Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. Kaplan’s vivid biography recounts the extraordinary life of Jessica “Decca” Mitford, the rebel Mitford sister who broke with her aristocratic, fascist-leaning family to embrace radical politics and a career in crusading journalism. In the second half of the twentieth century, Mitford became one of America’s most celebrated muckrakers, exposing abuses in prisons, hospitals, correspondence schools, prosecutors’ offices, and beyond. Her landmark 1963 bestseller, The American Way of Death, revealed predatory practices in the funeral industry and helped spur consumer-protection reforms. Troublemaker is both a page-turning life story—from a British estate to the Spanish Civil War to Mitford’s fearless reporting in the United States—and a powerful account of how unapologetically adversarial journalism can challenge entrenched institutions and protect the public.