More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York's Year of Anarchy [Hardcover]

Thai Jones (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 24, 2012

 

In the year that saw the start of World War I, the United States was itself on the verge of revolution: industrial depression in the east, striking coal miners in Colorado, and increasingly tense relations with Mexico. “There was blood in the air that year,” a witness later recalled, “there truly was.”

In New York, the year had opened with bright expectations, but 1914 quickly tumbled into disillusionment and violence. For John Purroy Mitchel, the city’s new “boy mayor,” the trouble started in January, when a crushing winter caused homeless shelters to overflow. By April, anarchist throngs paraded past industrialists’ mansions, and tens of thousands filled Union Square demanding “Bread or Revolution.” Then, on July 4, 1914, a detonation destroyed a seven-story Harlem tenement. It was the largest explosion the city had ever known. Among the dead were three bombmakers; incited by anarchist Alexander Berkman, they had been preparing to dynamite the estate of John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of a plutocratic dynasty and widely vilified for a massacre of his company’s striking workers in Colorado earlier that spring.

More Powerful Than Dynamite charts how anarchist anger, progressive idealism, and plutocratic paternalism converged in that July explosion. Its cast ranges from celebrated figures such as Emma Goldman, Upton Sinclair, and Andrew Carnegie to the fascinating and heretofore little known: Frank Tannenbaum, a homeless teenager who dared to lead his followers into the city’s churches; police inspector Max Schmittberger, too honest for his department and too crooked for everyone else; and Becky Edelsohn, a young anarchist known for her red tights and for spitting in millionaires’ faces. Historian and journalist Thai Jones creates a fascinating portrait of a city on the edge of chaos coming to terms with modernity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Jobless, homeless, hungry, desperate.  Remarkable how those words resonate through the years in the richest and most powerful country in world history.  Their significance is dramatically highlighted in this compelling and vivid portrayal of the currents that swept the country a century ago, and have come back to haunt and inspire us once again today.  More Powerful Than Dynamite is an impressive piece of work."—Noam Chomsky

"Almost exactly a century before Occupy Wall Street launched a cause and gripped a nation, a different kind of radical movement in New York City was stirring, stunning, and scaring the country. Thai Jones, a brilliant historian and breathtaking writer, tells this compelling story in MORE POWERFUL THAN DYNAMITE. In his hands, the past is indeed prologue."—Samuel G. Freedman, author of Jew Vs. Jew

"New York was as divided by class, race, and ideology a century ago as it is in our own time.  That the city actually exploded in 1914 is not surprising.  What is surprising is how subtly, persuasively, and imaginatively Thai Jones has interpreted the period and brought a rich cast of characters to life.  More Powerful Than  Dynamite is an exciting book."—Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia University, editor of The Encyclopedia of New York City

"Thai Jones brings into vivid life a period of American history when the haves and the have nots were close to civil war, a fascinating recreation of people we have forgotten at our own peril.  An enjoyable and enlightening read."—Marge Piercy, poet, novelist, memoirist

"A compelling and layered portrait of a year, a nation, and a people on the verge, More Powerful Than Dynamite is filled with echoes that clamor in contemporary America. The writing itself is so rich and powerful, the selection of scenes so smart, the details so telling, that it reads like an epic novel."—Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground and author of Fugitive Day

Praise for A Radical Line: 

"[T]his book begins with an intensely dramatic scene, and continues to fascinate the reader right through to the end. We follow a group of people—especially the notorious "Weather" people—who are at the center of the extraordinary events of the Sixties. Abstractions like "radicalism", "pacifism" "violence" are given a human face, as we see the characters in this book struggle, often in troubling ways, for a world free of war and injustice." —Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

About the Author

Thai Jones is author of A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience. Formerly a reporter for Newsday, he is a graduate of Vassar College and the Columbia School of Journalism, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in U.S. History at Columbia University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company; 1st Edition, 1st Printing edition (April 24, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802779336
• ISBN-13: 978-0802779335
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #608,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thai Jones is an assistant professor of history at the Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching Program. His work explores questions of American radicalism and dissent. His latest book, More Powerful than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York's year of Anarchy, was published by Walker and Co. in April. He is also the author of A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One family's Century of Conscience. He has written for a variety of national publications, ranging from the New York Times to the Occupied Wall Street Journal. He earned his PhD in history at Columbia University and is also a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant August 17, 2012

By Tamara Mann

Format:Hardcover

Thai Jones has masterfully captured the tension between political commitment and martyrdom. In his first work, "A Radical Line," Jones interrogated his own family's history of radicalism. In that haunting book, he managed to demonstrate all his grandmother, mother, and father accomplished by putting politics above careerism while tenderly exploring the resultant sacrifices borne by the family of radicals. In this work, Jones does it again. In "More Powerful than Dynamite" his characters push the limits of their ideologies, be it the value of disinterested expertise or the passionate fight for economic equity, to the margins of logic. Everyone in this impeccably researched and beautifully written history is an endearing and exasperating genius. In this book, Jones brings the reader into the middle of the major debates on industrial work, poverty, and wealth taking place in 1914 and manages to discuss this polarized politics with nuance. Thai Jones is an exceptional political thinker and a magnificent writer. This book is a must read!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars More Powerful Than Dynamite: dynamite documentation - prescient August 12, 2012

By Chris Sevinsky

Format:Hardcover

I picked up my copy of More Powerful Than Dynamite at the author's reading in Albany, NY, a few months ago. One thing about this book that no one seems to have mentioned so far is the author's use of digitized resources to create (or recreate, I guess) such a vivid portrait of century-old history. One passage in particular really struck me; in an early section of the book, Jones goes into the minutest detail concerning the progress of a series of storms that ravaged New York City in January and February 1914. He begins the passage (p. 56) by describing the action of a weather bureau machine as it recorded the dropping temperatures. Looking to the end notes I see that he sourced this sentence with a paragraph of different treatises, handbooks, and textbooks concerning weather technology and knowledge of the time. A paragraph or so later he mentions in passing that wind whipped across the hundred thousand rooftops of the metropolis. For some authors this might have been a hazarded guess or a figure of speech. For Jones, there is a footnote (on p. 350) that describes an article that reported "that the greater city's 102,400 houses contained 919,000 individual apartments.

And that is just one passage.

To support his description of the New York Police Department's chief inspector, Jones' footnote is longer than the passage in the text. A full page of notes go to one single paragraph (the paragraph is on p. 137, and the notes are on p. 362), describing the officer's physique (a newspaper article and a memoir), his mustache (a photo), his eye color (a passport registration card), etc., etc.

My favorite footnote, however, is on p. 22, where Jones is cataloguing the number of traffic fatalities incurred in New York in 1914.... Remarkably, the number is far higher than it is today, even though there are so many more cars around now than there were a hundred years ago. In the footnote the author wryly announces "Death by horse-drawn wagon have also dropped substantially."

As a scientist, I demand this level of documentation when considering arguments in my own field. This attention to detail is refreshing, and the result is a compelling treatment of a time with considerable parallels to our own. And Jones' timing is important. More Powerful Than Dynamite documents an important historical period, and helps put current events in historical perspective. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best non-fiction book of the year. June 8, 2012

By Darby Duff

Format:Hardcover

More Powerful Than Dynamite is a triumph--gripping, empathetic, and profound. Thai Jones is a brilliant historian, and an even better storyteller. He brings his reader into a perfectly drawn world of idealistic industrialists and hunger-striking anarchists, rendering each character, from John D. Rockefeller to Upton Sinclair, in vivid, memorable detail. This is non-fiction executed with the narrative thrill and psychological complexity of a great novel. More relevant than today's New York Times, More Powerful Than Dynamite is popular history at its best, simultaneously uncovering the New York City of 1914, and shedding new light on today's world.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This Would Have Been Deadly in Another Writer's Hands November 28, 2012

By Rocco Dormarunno

Format:Hardcover

Having read Thai Jones' "More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York's Year of Anarchy" hot on the heels after reading Richard Zacks' "Island of Vice", I feel I had a bit of an advantage going into this book. Some of the personae are the same; NYPD legend Max Schmittberger is the most prominent. But it was the times in New York City--the attitude to reform, the Tammany machine lurking in the corner, the enforcement of liquor laws--all of which figured so large in Zacks' book, that are highlighted and spotlighted here, too. Zacks' book, however, focused on one man's two-year tenure as New York's Police Commissioner: Teddy Roosevelt. In "More Powerful Than Dynamite", Jones tackles--or should I say embraces--the several New Yorkers who reacted to and molded the economic and social conditions of the times. Jones successfully--very successfully--brings that New York back to life, makes its concerns still relevant, and leaves us with lingering questions about justice and freedom in our own time.

Focusing mostly on 1914, with excursions into the years immediately before and after, Thai Jones carefully and lovingly examines the "radicals, plutocrats and progressives" who affected the lives of so many New Yorkers, so many Americans. The key players, John Rockefeller, Jr., Mayor John Purroy Mitchell, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Frank Tannenbaum, etc., are given most of the real estate in the text, and deservedly so. But never EVER lost in the discussions of these personalities is the working man. Thai Jones is to be credited for keeping in focus the effects these radicals, progressives and plutocrats had on the working class, whether in New York City or in the coal mines of Colorado....

But no one, not even the laborers (employed or not), is really glamorized or vilified here--and this truly is the reason for the full five stars I gave this book. Jones renders every historic character in three dimensions. The "Good" have dirt under their fingernails; the "Evil" have the best intentions. Jones makes it clear that the public life can ruin a good man and redeem the lost cause. A different writer may have written this as an apology or manifesto for the groups involved. Another writer might have made this a numbing history of statistics. And yet another might have written this in an anarchistic style: no order, no documentation, no cohesion. Any of these approaches would have been deadly reading. While "More Powerful Than Dynamite" is meticulously documented, it reads smoothly and with engagement. Some sections are actual page-turners. The generous photographs sprinkled throughout put human faces on these people, and that always helps. This book will appeal to anyone interested in political science, New York/American history, and/or labor relations. Read more ›