Set in the California apple country this novel portrays a strike by migrant workers that metamorphoses from principled defiance into blind fanaticism.

Describes the conditions and treatment that drove workers, including many children, to various strikes, from the mill workers strikes in 1828 and 1836 and the coal strikes at the turn of the century to the work of Mother Jones on behalf of child workers. By the early 1900s, nearly two million children were working in the United States. From the coal mines of Pennsylvania to the cotton mills of New England, children worked long hours every day under...

"Howard Zinn recounts the dramatic tale of the great coal mine strike in Colorado that culminated in the Ludlow Massacre. The story pits immigrant workers against the National Guard, Mother Jones against the Rockefellers, and corporate power against union organizing, a story that is all too familiar today." "With Dana Frank we join a sit-in strike in a Detroit Woolworth's during the Great Depression where young women slept on the floor, played games...