Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology [Hardcover]

Joyce Kornbluh (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1988

Originally published in 1964 and long out of print, Kornbluh's Rebel Voices remains by far the biggest and best source on IWW history, fiction, songs, art and lore. Besides the full text and illustrations of the original, this new and expanded edition includes 32 pages of additional material: a new introduction and updated bibliography by old-time Wobbly organizer and scholar Fred Thompson; an informative essay on Wobbly cartoons and cartoonists by Franklin Rosemont; more than 3 dozen additional cartoons and drawings and a useful index. 450 oversize pages crammed with the Wobblies in all their glory!

Product Details

• Hardcover: 446 pages
• Publisher: Charles H Kerr; Revised edition (December 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 088286145X
• ISBN-13: 978-0882861456
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,294,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars They Had The Best Songs, January 17, 2005

By 

Chimonsho (Turtle Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology (Paperback)

"Rebel Voices" is a peerless collection of primary evidence on the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, our most exuberant labor radicals. It preserves a most diverse array of material, including pamphlets, newspaper articles and court transcripts, but also less conventional sources such as flyers, broadsheets, cartoons, and labor ballads. Kornbluh portrays the IWW as a dynamic, vital force fighting for workplace democracy and civil rights from 1905 to 1917, an era of bleak prospects for labor. The IWW ultimately succumbed to concerted government repression: violence, propaganda, punitive trials, and deportations. Many of the Wobblies' goals were later achieved through reform during and after the New Deal, but they left an inspiring activist legacy. The pictorial matter and music are especially revealing, and help illustrate the old adage that the government and bosses may have the money, guns and victories, but the workers have the best songs. Cf. M. Dubofsky, "We Shall Be All," a thorough narrative and analysis. More recent studies include G. Hall, "Harvest Wobblies," N. Sellars, "Oil, Wheat & Wobblies" and J.A. Lukas, "Big Trouble."

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "a peerless collection" is right, July 25, 2006

By 

ashley (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology (Paperback)

It would be hard for anyone interested in radical labor history to ask for more from a book than comes with Rebel Voices. This collection is absolutely filled with songs, essays, poems, art and political cartoons from the Wobblies during their most crucial and influential years, and covers many major figures from Joe Hill to Sacco and Vanzetti, as well as the lesser known workers fighting for justice in the 20th century.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still the Best on the IWW, September 19, 2009

By 

Richard J. Gibson (san diego, california United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology (Hardcover)

This work is simply unsurpassed as the best available on the IWW. Well written and very well illustrated, it's also a fine piece of scholarly research that remains accessible to nearly any reader who wants to know what real unionism once was--and it was not the Corporate State unionism of today. Not a single labor leader of any importance in the US believes that "The employing class and the working class have nothing in common" (the opening of the famous IWW preamble. The Labor Bosses of today deny that there are even significant contradictions with employers, thus deceiving the people who join unions thinking that is the very reason they send dues. The IWW's were internationalists, anti-racist, direct action oriented, and courageous--and Kornbluh's brilliant text, poems, songs, and photos will show you what they did.