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 Yorkerstaff 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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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