Big Bill Haywood

ISBN: 0312012721

Author: DUBOFSKY, Melvyn

Condition: New

'Big Bill' Haywood was called 'the most dangerous man in America'. Simply and clearly written, this brief biography traces his life from his youth in the Mountain West of the U.S. to his exile and death in the Soviet Union, describing on the way how an ordinary American workingman became the most feared labour radical of his generation.

Based on wide reading about the history of labour and radicalism in the U.S., the biography summarises and synthesises for general readers the best contemporary scholarship on radical labour movements, socialism and syndicalism in the U.S.. It explores how those in power used the law to punish such radicals as Haywood, who fled into exile rather than spend his last years in prison. And it describes Haywood's role in several of the most violent and dramatic industrial conflicts in American history, from the bloody battles waged by workers in turn-of-the-century western mining cities to the massive upheaval of the years 1910-13.

Useful for university and college courses as well as appealing to the general reader.