What do you think?
Rate this book
Revolution in Seattle: A Memoir
The Seattle General Strike of 1919 was America’s first citywide labor stoppage, a defiant example of workers’ power in the aftermath of World War I. Told in gripping detail by one of the era’s great labor journalists, Revolution in Seattle captures the dramatic dynamics of workers organizing strike committees to take control of their city from below. Republished on the tenth anniversary of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” against the World Trade Organization, Harvey O’Connor’s book offers lessons and inspiration to a new generation of rebels. Harvey O’Connor was a seminal labor journalist and historian, whose work exposed the greed of the depression-era “robber barons” and labor struggles nationwide.
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
8 people are currently reading
172 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 16, 2022
On its cover, Revolution in Seattle is billed as a political memoir, so I went into it expecting a personal story of what it was like to live through the 1919 Seattle general strike. Instead, this book is a high-level history of the radical elements of the Seattle and PNW labor movements. This isn’t a bad book; it just wasn’t what I expected. For a “memoir,” this book is almost completely lacking in any personal perspective. By my count, the word “I” appears in this book only twice. I know almost nothing about the author, what he believed, what his role was in these events, or what he thought about any of the people and happenings that he painstakingly details.
This book was written in 1964, and the writing feels dated and clunky in places. But more than that, the story is dry and impersonal. It felt like reading a textbook more than a man’s own story. Keeping with the “textbook” vibe, Revolution in Seattle is too detailed at times—do we need to know the name and occupation of everyone who was jailed for a minor uprising? I picked up this book primarily because I wanted to learn about the Seattle general strike, but I had to read through about 100 pages of labor history background before the strike was even mentioned. For a book that’s ostensibly centered on the general strike, it doesn’t really focus on said strike very much.
In fact, there is only one chapter on the strike itself. This chapter quickly reviews how the strike was decided, provides a high-level description of what the city was like during the strike (quiet, mostly), and then details how the strike was ultimately ended. The strike chapter is about 20 pages in a book that’s over 200 pages long. Kinda a letdown. I really wanted more of a personal perspective here. What was it like to know the strike was looming? How did people prepare? What was the mood like? How it feel when the city suddenly shut down? What was life actually like on the street? How did people react? What were their daily lives like during this time? I wish the book had told these personal stories; I wanted to read something I couldn’t find on Wikipedia.
Knowing the history of the American labor movement is important, and reading about the workers’ dedication to their principles and to each other was inspiring. This book also does a good job driving home the intense, horrific violence that everyday people faced simply for daring to ask for things like the 8-hour workday or the weekend. I always knew the labor movement had a violent history, but reading about it in detail in this book made it much more real. Revolution in Seattle is an inspiring and bitter history lesson on the power of American labor, and on the state-sanctioned violence and treachery that literally beat it into submission. This book is an interesting historical account, but it is not much of a memoir.
The two essays in the appendix of this book were the most interesting part. In the first piece, three radicals share their stories and explain what drew them to socialism and what inspired them to organize their fellow workers. The second piece is a short biography of the anarchist/straight up badass Louise Olivereau and how she was willing to go to jail for her principles. These two short essays are dropped in the book as an afterthought, but they felt like the beating heart of this entire book because they told actual human stories from the perspective of the people who lived them. I wish the whole book had told more stories like those in the appendix.
This book was written in 1964, and the writing feels dated and clunky in places. But more than that, the story is dry and impersonal. It felt like reading a textbook more than a man’s own story. Keeping with the “textbook” vibe, Revolution in Seattle is too detailed at times—do we need to know the name and occupation of everyone who was jailed for a minor uprising? I picked up this book primarily because I wanted to learn about the Seattle general strike, but I had to read through about 100 pages of labor history background before the strike was even mentioned. For a book that’s ostensibly centered on the general strike, it doesn’t really focus on said strike very much.
In fact, there is only one chapter on the strike itself. This chapter quickly reviews how the strike was decided, provides a high-level description of what the city was like during the strike (quiet, mostly), and then details how the strike was ultimately ended. The strike chapter is about 20 pages in a book that’s over 200 pages long. Kinda a letdown. I really wanted more of a personal perspective here. What was it like to know the strike was looming? How did people prepare? What was the mood like? How it feel when the city suddenly shut down? What was life actually like on the street? How did people react? What were their daily lives like during this time? I wish the book had told these personal stories; I wanted to read something I couldn’t find on Wikipedia.
Knowing the history of the American labor movement is important, and reading about the workers’ dedication to their principles and to each other was inspiring. This book also does a good job driving home the intense, horrific violence that everyday people faced simply for daring to ask for things like the 8-hour workday or the weekend. I always knew the labor movement had a violent history, but reading about it in detail in this book made it much more real. Revolution in Seattle is an inspiring and bitter history lesson on the power of American labor, and on the state-sanctioned violence and treachery that literally beat it into submission. This book is an interesting historical account, but it is not much of a memoir.
The two essays in the appendix of this book were the most interesting part. In the first piece, three radicals share their stories and explain what drew them to socialism and what inspired them to organize their fellow workers. The second piece is a short biography of the anarchist/straight up badass Louise Olivereau and how she was willing to go to jail for her principles. These two short essays are dropped in the book as an afterthought, but they felt like the beating heart of this entire book because they told actual human stories from the perspective of the people who lived them. I wish the whole book had told more stories like those in the appendix.
July 13, 2015
Reading this helped me realize just why accounts of historical radical movements are so moving to me. It feels like I'm reading my own family history.
My actual family history is full of Mormons and Swedes and probably some pretty exciting things. But I can't help but feel closer to the folks from these pages--the folks from a century ago who spent hours each day laboring to wield power against almighty corporations, who saw dignity in being jailed for voicing their dissenting opinions, who saw the world through a class lens instead of a nationalistic one. It's so reassuring to hear how they spent hours deliberating in the Labor Temple (where I work today!) about tactics and politics. It's devastating to read how their efforts sometimes fizzle and are overturned, but breathtaking to consider what they accomplished--an 8-hour day for loggers, in 1917?!
The flow of the writing here is clunky and the first and last chapters are such broad overviews that they read more like a list of facts than like a narrative. But it doesn't matter. They're my people.
My actual family history is full of Mormons and Swedes and probably some pretty exciting things. But I can't help but feel closer to the folks from these pages--the folks from a century ago who spent hours each day laboring to wield power against almighty corporations, who saw dignity in being jailed for voicing their dissenting opinions, who saw the world through a class lens instead of a nationalistic one. It's so reassuring to hear how they spent hours deliberating in the Labor Temple (where I work today!) about tactics and politics. It's devastating to read how their efforts sometimes fizzle and are overturned, but breathtaking to consider what they accomplished--an 8-hour day for loggers, in 1917?!
The flow of the writing here is clunky and the first and last chapters are such broad overviews that they read more like a list of facts than like a narrative. But it doesn't matter. They're my people.
April 3, 2015
A startling indictment of the hostility ranged against unionized workers at the turn of the century. Its frightening that Big Business--and the public in general--was prepared to murder our union brothers to keep them down, and often they did. Except that it was the Union people who most often faced prosecution. What's most frightening is that our country only enjoyed the benefits of unionization for 40 years at best, before corporate bloodsuckers put their boots back on the necks of American workers. And we're going to have to fight for what we won all over again.
March 17, 2025
Washington State is the home of class struggle in the United States ✊
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews