A rigorous and balanced examination of a sadly neglected figure in the American labor movement.
A debut book delivers a searching history of a labor leader’s relentless persecution by the U.S. government.
Most Americans probably haven’t heard of Harry Bridges, despite the fact that he was one of the most consequential, and vilified, labor leaders in the nation’s history. Born in Australia, he found work in the United States as a longshoreman in San Francisco, and was drawn to the power of unionization as a tonic to absolutely appalling employment conditions. But in the 1930s, even the existing unions were essentially co-opted by bullying ship owners, who ultimately had the last say on wages and working environments. Bridges not only refused to join the “Blue Book” union, as it was dubbed, but advocated for a centralized union for the whole West Coast, too large and unified to be intimidated. He also progressively championed fully democratic procedures and representation, financial transparency, and an end to racial discrimination. In a move that made him infamous, Bridges led a mammoth strike that strangled the industry for nearly three months, during which police fired haphazardly into an open crowd of demonstrators. The strike was ultimately successful, unionizing the totality of the West Coast. But the government then embarked on a 20-year campaign to brand Bridges a member of the Communist Party, and have him exiled from the country. Afrasiabi follows this prosecutorial hunt like an investigative journalist, which includes four separate trials and the involvement of the Supreme Court. He scrupulously produces evidence that the government spied on Bridges, suborned perjury, and essentially falsified evidence. The author, admirably judicious in his presentation, acknowledges that Bridges’ rhetoric often seemed like boilerplate Communist fare. The labor leader expressed convictions that aligned with Communist ideology, and even turned to the party for help on occasion. But Afrasiabi produces persuasive evidence that Bridges was never a full-fledged party member, and was simply too practical to be overly infatuated with philosophical platforms. As Bridges once said: “As far as I have delved into them they are pretty much a matter of theory, and our hands are full with practical matters...I generally stay with the practical matters.” This is a meticulous and measured account of both an intriguing man and a historically significant movement.
A rigorous and balanced examination of a sadly neglected figure in the American labor movement.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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