Joe Hill: The I.W.W. and the Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture

by Franklin Rosemont

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]

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Labor, Biography, Politics, Society

639 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Franklin Rosemont was co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Henry, was a labor activist. His mother, Sally, was a jazz musician.
He edited & wrote an introduction for What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of Andre Breton, & edited Rebel Worker, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, The Rise & Fall of the DIL Pickle: Jazz-Age Chicago's Wildest & Most Outrageously Creative Hobohemian Nightspot & Juice is Stranger than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim. With his wife, Penelope Rosemont, & 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 & Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth) & of the radical labor movement in America, for instance, writing a biogaphy of Joe Hill.
He is the author of the poetry collections The Morning of a Machine Gun: Twenty Poems & Documents. Profusely Illustrated By the Author, The Apple of the Automatic Zebra's Eye, & Penelope: A Poem, as well as An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers, a book that explores the phenomenon of "wrong numbers" from a surrealist perspective, published by Black Swan Press in Chicago in 2003.
Rosemont and his wife urrently live in the East Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, managing the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, the world's oldest, continuously existing socialist publishing house.

Reviews

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rosemont's book proves a not-so-little little pipe bomb. The full weight of the affect it will have had on my life will only be clarified by time, but I imagine it will be considerable. Less a book about Joe Hill, about whom biographical information is dispiritingly scant, this is a book about The Industrial Workers of the World union (the One Big Union) framed around the role Joe Hill played in it as organizer, songwriter, poet, commentator, cartoonist, card-carrying member, and martyr. Rosemont totally convincingly argues that the IWW was far and away the most inspirational and ripe-for-emulation American emancipatory labour movement of the first half of the twentieth century, with tendrils that reach beyond. It strikes me now, having read this exemplary work, that, going forward, I will be unable to engage the world without directly engaging the way labour and toil are disastrous forces of alienation in our world, and that the antidote is in solidarity, art, humour, inclusivity, and collective refusal. I am on fire w/ this thing!

[Zanden Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty solid biography but falls into the "idk" lane too much. could probably be condensed but there's a lot of great info and stories and people. not really a bio on Hill but the whole movement.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of excellent material. But too often was a chronicle of topics for further historical research