[10] Ralph Nader occasionally helped at his father's restaurant, as well as worked as a newspaper delivery boy for the local paper, the Winsted Register Citizen.

[12] Nader graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa[13] with a Bachelor of Arts from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1955 after completing a senior thesis titled "Lebanese Agriculture".

While at Harvard, Nader would frequently skip classes to hitchhike across the U.S. where he would engage in field research on Native American issues and migrant worker rights.

For the book, Nader researched case files from more than a hundred lawsuits then pending against General Motors' Chevrolet Corvair to support his assertions.

Ribicoff convened an inquiry that called GM CEO James Roche who admitted, when placed under oath, that the company had hired a private detective agency to investigate Nader.

Nader sued GM for invasion of privacy, settling the case for $425,000 and using the proceeds to found the activist organization known as the Center for the Study of Responsive Law.

[11] A year following the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, Congress unanimously enacted the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act.

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John William McCormack said the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was brought about by the "crusading spirit of one individual who believed he could do something: Ralph Nader".

Based on the results of that second study, Richard Nixon revitalized the agency and sent it on a path of vigorous consumer protection and antitrust enforcement for the rest of the 1970s.

[22] Nader's Raiders became involved in such issues as nuclear safety, international trade, regulation of insecticides, meat processing, pension reform, land use, and banking.

[27][28] In 1973, Ralph Nader was plaintiff in the case against acting attorney general Robert Bork, who under orders of President Richard Nixon had fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, an action that was ultimately ruled illegal by federal judge Gerhard Gesell.

[30] In the 1970s, Nader turned his attention to environmental activism, becoming a key leader in the antinuclear power movement, described by one observer as the "titular head of opposition to nuclear energy".

[33] The organization's main efforts were directed at lobbying activities and providing local groups with scientific and other resources to campaign against nuclear power.

[56] His 1996 running mates included: Anne Goeke (nine states), Deborah Howes (Oregon), Muriel Tillinghast (New York), Krista Paradise (Colorado), Madelyn Hoffman (New Jersey), Bill Boteler (Washington, D.C.), and Winona LaDuke (California and Texas).

[57] In the 2006 documentary An Unreasonable Man, Nader described how he was unable to get the views of his public-interest groups heard in Washington, even by the Clinton Administration.

Nader cited this as one of the primary reasons why he decided to actively run in the 2000 election as candidate of the Green Party, which had been formed in the wake of his 1996 campaign.

[60] On August 12, the United Citizens Party of South Carolina chose Ralph Nader as its presidential nominee, giving him a ballot line in the state.

[61] In October 2000, at the largest Super Rally of his campaign,[62] held in New York City's Madison Square Garden, 15,000 people paid $20 each[63] to hear Nader speak.

Nader's campaign rejected both parties as institutions dominated by corporate interests, stating that Al Gore and George W. Bush were "Tweedledee and Tweedledum".

A long list of notable celebrities spoke and performed at the event including Susan Sarandon, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Eddie Vedder and Patti Smith.

[75]However, Jonathan Chait of The American Prospect and The New Republic notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for.

[84] Nader was endorsed by Howard Zinn, Jesse Ventura, Justin Jeffre, Tom Morello, Val Kilmer, Rocky Anderson, James Abourezk, Patti Smith, and Jello Biafra.

[105] In February of that year, while noting that he would not vote for him personally, he expressed support for Donald Trump making a third-party run for president, saying that such a move might help break-up the two party system.

[107] A year later, Nader announced he was financially backing the creation of another newspaper in his hometown called the Winsted Citizen and provided $15,000 for the first monthly issue printed February 2023.

According to Politico, the publication's coverage centers on issues important to Nader, such as the growth of corporate influence on the federal government, corruption among lawmakers and the follies and failures of the mainstream political media.

[9] After his older brother Shafeek died of prostate cancer in 1986, Nader developed Bell's palsy, which paralyzed the left side of his mouth for several months.

[120] Despite access to respectable financial assets, he lives in a modest apartment and spends $25,000 annually on personal bills, conducting most of his writing on a typewriter.

[121][122] According to popular accounts of his personal life, he does not own a television, relies primarily on public transportation, and over a 25-year period, until 1983, exclusively wore one of a dozen pairs of shoes he had purchased at a clearance sale in 1959.

His suits, which he reports he purchases at sales and outlet stores, have been the repeated subject of public scrutiny, being variously described as "wrinkled", "rumpled", and "styleless".

Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered marriage, to which he responded that he had made a choice to dedicate his life to career rather than family.