For young rebels seeking an authentic American radical tradition, the IWW provides a solid heritage of revolutionary commitment and militant methods. Grappling with the issues of economic and social inequality which plague us yet today, the "Wobblies" employed violent strikes, struggles on street corners, picket lines for free speech and better working conditions, and stirring songs of protest in pursuit of their own vision of a Great (New) Society dedicated to the freedom and dignity of all men. Before W.W. I they were spreading the gospel of Poor Power, "teaching society's orphans and outcasts that power -- society's native force -- comes through organization, and that the poor must organize to help themselves." Dubofsky traces the IWW from its origins in the class war on the "industrial frontier" and the development from "pure and simple unionism" to revolutionary radicalism to its prewar heyday which culminated in the 1917 government raids and arrests that broke the back of the "Wobbly menace" and heralded its decline into a pale ghost of an organization disappearing into the "Haunted Halls" of American labor history. With its deliberate focus upon the revolutionary, aspects of Wobblyism, the book reveals much about the strengths and weaknesses of native radicalism and the ultimate tragedy for all humane revolutionaires in advanced societies who accept betterment for their followers today "at the expense of utopia tomorrow." Though Dubofsky approaches his material with a decided eye for the radical and the contemporarily relevant, he balances his sympathies with sufficient objectivity to make his book a worthy contribution.--Kirkus reviews.