Critique Samuel Hopkins Adams was a very important muckraker to American History Without the writing efforts of Mr Adams the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 might have never existed The Pure Food and Drug Act is a law that makes federal inspection of meat products mandatory and restricts the manufacture sale and or transportation of contaminated food products and poisonous patent medicines The Wikipedia article on Samuel Hopkins Adams is not as informative as the American National Biography To begin the Wikipedia article is barely a page and a half while the American National Biography is approaching three pages Both sources are credible but in the end the American National Biography gives the Samuel Hopkins Adams the respect he deserves and fully gives a summary of him not just a jumbled and sparse summary of his life Unlike the American National Biography the Wikipedia article just gives very basic information on Mr Adams life while giving just a long list of all the literature works he ever wrote The American National Biography gives a very good mixture of both and gives a better understanding to what kind of person Mr Adams was and how his literature and his life connect Mr Adams date of death in the ANB article is November 16 1958 while Wikipedia states the wrong date of death November 15 1958 The Wikipedia article is very random in the information it gives to its reader in a way it jumps all over the place and the ideas are not as organized as the American National Biography For example the Wikipedia article says that Mr Adams was a prolific writer but fails to explain how but rather just runs off with all the works Mr Adams has ever written which really is not helpful information into getting a better background of Mr Adams Samuel V Kennedy the author of the article for the American National Biography mentions Mr Adams parent s so we can see were he comes from as a child His father was a minister so we can make the inference that Mr Adams had some type of religious childhood The Wikipedia article breezes over Mr Adams education while the ANB mentions the college he attended which was Hamilton College and how even took a semester at Union College ANB mentions that Mr Adams was a devoted alumnus after graduation he served as a trustee for Hamilton College from 1905 1916 Wikipedia also neglects to mention Mr Adams awards such as winning an election to Phi Beta Kappa in 1907 and receiving an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 1926 which is from the ANB article Both article mentions where his professional career began which is the New York Sun Wikipedia fails to mention that Adams became an editorial staffer in 1904 A big fact Wikipedia does not have the ANB does have is that Adams worked with Lincoln Steffens Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker in which he specialized in medical reporting of public health issues which involved into muckraking This is a very important fact because this is what Adams is known for muckraking and Wikipedia fails to mention this Wikipedia does go into depth about one book that ANB did not Unforbidden Fruit was one of the more risky novels Adams wrote in the 1920s Unforbidden Fruit and Flaming Youth were two books he wrote in the 1920s that were about the sexual urges of young women and Adams published these book under the pseudonym Warner Fabian Adams did this so his other works would not be looked at differently due to the sexual content of these two works Another fact the Wikipedia article has that the ANB does not is that Adams was close friends with Ray Stannard Baker investigative reporter and Benjamin Darrow District Attorney Writing about history was not Adams strong point and when he wrote stories using the backdrop of history they were nowhere near as successful as his other works The Wikipedia article skips a segment of Adams life from 1905 1911 In the Wiki article there is nothing mentioned in this period while in the ANB we learned he was hired by Collier s Weekly to write articles on patent medicines This fact is important because this is what Adams is very well known for We also find out Adams divorced his wife Elizabeth Ruffner Noyes in 1907 the Wikipedia article never mentions that he was married then divorced and then re married again Jane Peyton who was an actress and had two daughters with Elizabeth Ruffner Noyes Wikipedia also fails to mention that Adams didn t just write books but produced 450 short stories and articles ANB mentions how Adam s papers are still being used by younger generations which Wikipedia does not This is important because the spread of his ideas and thoughts are still influencing generations way after his His papers are used at Syracuse University Hamilton College and even Harvard University As you can infer the American National Biography is a better article then the Wikipedia article