Tony Horwitz, whose vivid stories about working-class Americans won him a Pulitzer Prize at The Wall Street Journal before he became a best-selling history author, died at age 60.
William Power of The Journal writes, “A Northerner with a deep fascination for the South, Mr. Horwitz is remembered as one of the most talented Journal writers of the past 35 years. In addition to covering wars as a foreign correspondent, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1995 for articles about working conditions in low-wage America.
“His Dec. 1, 1994, first-person Page One article, about working in a poultry slaughterhouse in Mississippi, began:
“They call it ‘the chain,’ a swift steel shackle that shuttles dead chickens down a disassembly line of hangers, skinners, gut-pullers and gizzard-cutters. The chain has been rattling at 90 birds a minute for nine hours when the woman working feverishly beside me crumples onto a pile of drumsticks.
“‘No more,’ she whimpers. A foreman with a stopwatch around his neck rushes up. ‘Come on now,’ he bellows. ‘Pump it up!'”
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