[issybird]

Choices with one or two nominations:

**Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream by Bruce Watson [Catlady, issybird]
Amazon US $9.99

Spoiler:

On January 12, 1912, an army of textile workers stormed out of the mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, commencing what has since become known as the "Bread and Roses" strike. Based on newspaper accounts, magazine reportage, and oral histories, Watson reconstructs a Dickensian drama involving thousands of parading strikers from fifty-one nations, unforgettable acts of cruelty, and even a protracted murder trial that tested the boundaries of free speech. A rousing look at a seminal and overlooked chapter of the past, Bread and Roses is indispensable reading.

Well sourced, evenhanded and briskly paced, Watson's account of the dramatic textile mill strike in Lawrence, Mass., during the icy winter of 1912 presents a panoramic glimpse of a half-forgotten America, one in which violent agitation and swift repression were often the order of the day. The story of how a polyglot mass of immigrants hailing from Syria to Scotland cohered into a powerful bargaining force is riveting in itself, and Watson (The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made) places that struggle within the larger currents of reform that were slowly reshaping America. The cast includes self-made mill owner William Wood, who simply couldn't understand how "his" workers could betray him; Joseph Ettor, the union organizer who slept in a different bed every night to avoid reprisals; fiery Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of the IWW and muckracker Ida Tarbell. The bloody strike was repressed from public memory in the hyperpatriotic years of WWI, later idealized by the labor movement in ways that downplayed union violence. This book's subtitle, and its contents, suggest that the "American Dream" enjoyed by the nation's middle class had to be taken by force by the working class and is by no means a permanent entitlement.

368 pp.

*The Silent March by C.M. Klyne [CRussel]
AmazonUS $5.04, AmazonCA $4.99, AmazonAU $6.66, AmazonUK £3.59

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Goodreads.com

Winnipeg, 1919. The Winnipeg General Strike, the Spanish influenza and a sociopathic personality coalesce to forge a summer of strife, death and hope for a community still suffering the pestilence of the first world war.
Can bacteriologist Dr. Anna Williams, driven by the need to prove herself in a predominantly male research lab and responding to a panicky public health department, overcome the resistant attitudes of her male colleagues, to unlock the mysteries surrounding the deadly influenza virus?
Will the infamous Committee of One Thousand subvert the intentions of the strike leaders and the growing union movement and prevent the spread of Bolshevism upon Canadian soil?
Will Earle Nelson, a murderous sociopath and righteous zealot, force his will upon those he perceives as undesirable and unacceptable?
Follow Klyne’s story as he leads you through the streets of Winnipeg – reliving historical events with brilliant character creations whose intricate paths of emotions, ideas and conflicts culminated in what became known as Bloody Saturday.

416 pp.

*In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck [Catlady]
Amazon U.S. $12.99

Spoiler:

At once a relentlessly fast-paced, admirably observed novel of social unrest and the story of a young man's struggle for identity, In Dubious Battle is set in the California apple country, where a strike by migrant workers against rapacious landowners spirals out of control, as a principled defiance metamorphoses into blind fanaticism. Caught in the upheaval is Jim Nolan, a once aimless man who find himself in the course of the strike, briefly becomes its leader, and is ultimately crushed in its service.

302 pp.