Joe Hill: The IWW & The Making Of A Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture [Paperback]

Franklin Rosemont (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2003

A monumental work, expansive in scope, and not only the life, times, and culture of that most famous of the Wobblies (songwriter, poet, hobo, thinker, humorist, martyr), but crucially - and in great detail - the issues that he raised then - capitalism, white supremacy, gender, religion, wilderness, law, prison, industrial unionism - and their enduring relevance, and impact in the century since his death. Collected too is all his art, plus scores of other illustrations featuring Hill-inspired art by IWWs from Ralph Chaplin to Carlos Cortez, as well as other labor artists. "It has been a long time since so much new material on Joe Hill and the Wobblies has been collected in one volume. All students of the IWW, labor cartoons and songs, radical humor, and the history of blue-collar countercultures in the US will find this book indispensable." [Salvatore Salerno] "In Franklin Rosemont, Joe Hill has finally found a chronicler worthy of his revolutionary spirit, sense of humor, and poetic imagination. This is no ordinary biography. It is a journey into the Wobbly culture that made Joe Hill and the capitalist culture that killed him. But as Rosemont suggests in this remarkable book, Joe Hill never really dies. He will live in the minds of young rebels as long as his songs are sung, his ideas are circulated, and his political descendants keep fighting for a better day." [Robin D G Kelley]

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Franklin Rosemont was born on October 2, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Henry, was a labor activist, and mother, Sally, a jazz musician. He edited and wrote an introduction for What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of Andre Breton, and edited Rebel Worker, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DIL PICKLE and Juice Is Stranger Than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim. With Penelope Rosemont and Paul Garon he edited THE FORECAST IS HOT!. His work has been deeply concerned with both the history of surrealism (writing a forward for Max Ernst and Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth) and of the radical labor movement in America, for instance, writing a biography of Joe Hill. He died on April 12, 2009, in Chicago.

Product Details

• Paperback: 650 pages
• Publisher: Charles H Kerr; 1st edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882862642
• ISBN-13: 978-0882862644
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,619,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best IWW books- Buy two copies, September 5, 2003

By 

M. Miller - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Joe Hill: The IWW & The Making Of A Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture (Paperback)

I grew up with stories of the IWW permiating my family. They were legendary do gooders (mom's side of the family) and absolute evil (dad's). I choose mom's view. This book of several dozen short essays on the IWW and Joe Hill is one of the best I've ever read on the subject. And I have most every book written on the subject and several file drawers full of photocopies to boot.

Rosemont uses Joe Hill, the world's most famious wobbly, as a reason not only for the book but as a muse. The stories of Joe Hill, often from older wobblies who actually knew Joe Hill, are excellent and often the only place where you can find them.

But most of the book uses Hill as a muse to reflect on Rosemonts' own experiences as an IWW, and more importantly, the experiences of other IWWs he has known. For example, in my faourite article, Rosemont starts with the fact that Joe Hill was an accomplished Chinese cook. He asks the question, why? That leads to historic documents and personal recolections which discuss the IWW's affinity for Chinese cooking as a solidarity effort with chinese workers being discriminated against by the AFL, et all.

Sure there are aspects of speculation in Rosemonts book. So what? He knew dozens of old IWWs as a young man and knows their unwritten histories. I knew half a dozen old wobs when I was a young man and Franklin Rosemont's book rings true, its just like the stories old wobblies told me. This is the stuff, as they would say.

This book is so much better than an academic history. They are dead and dry. This book is fun, a delight, a living history, an oral history. From my long experience with the IWW (25 or so years) as well as the stories told to me by the first generation of wobblies, this book is spot on the money. This is a real IWW history, told in an IWW manner.

Buy two copies, one to read, one to lend.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tracing the life of the Wobbly bard, September 8, 2003

By 

Paul Garon (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Joe Hill: The IWW & The Making Of A Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture (Paperback)

This is a huge and wonderful book, full of the details of Joe Hill's life. Many aspects of the life and lore of Joe Hill receive their first and only discussion in this 642-page opus. Frustrated academics often rail at the little supporting documentation surrounding the lives of working class heros, from blues singers to union organizers, and they often abandon ship in the face of such frustration. But Rosemont has had the endurance to follow every trail leading to and from Joe Hill, and we the readers are much richer for it. It's also a mini-history of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and their relationship to the arts, poetry, feminism, cops, Stalinism, the Beats and more. There's even a chapter discussing Joe Hill myths! Profusely illustrated with IWW and Joe Hill graphics, this book will give you hours of enjoyable reading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well, his heart was in the right place., August 7, 2003

By 

"needstobuyabike" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joe Hill: The IWW & The Making Of A Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture (Paperback)

There are parts of this book which are utterly engrossing. Rosemont constructs a fine narrative of events. Perhaps I should say "events", as it is at times researched like a eighth-grade paper. Lots of conjecture, unsupported speculation, hearsay and other aspects of irresponsible scholarship. Mr. Rosemont freely admits that there is frustratingly little concrete evidence about much of Hill's life, but he chooses to try and flesh out a lengthy book anyways. This is exasperating at times as when one is forced to try and endure each and every tedious mentioning of the drawn or painted art of Joe Hill, despite the lack of much actual material (surviving anyways). However, by doing this he touches on many peripheral aspects of Hill's life that have gone by and large unnoticed till now, but which are much easier to verify than the sketchy details about Hill himself. Several mentions of correspondence, lives affected by Hill, and reactions to Hill's art, and many others tidbits of information are thrown out for more or less the first time in cohesive form. Less cohesive, and downright teasing at times, are many starts and stops of several ideas that would be very interesting on their own. The Wobbly influence on the beat poets, the slighting of the IWW by other revolutionary and pseudorevolutionary groups (rarely written about from a fellow worker's perspective), and others seem like promising beginnings for reading but then are waded into only ankle-deep. At one point when abandoning a topic Mr. Rosemont even suggests that it would be a good idea for further research, by someone else. All in all a fairly decent read but could have used prodigious editing and some fact-checking with standards higher than those of the NY Times.