These are some of the more popular books about the IWW (not published by Charles Kerr Press):

The Industrial Workers Of The World: Its First One Hundred Years 1905-2005 - by Jon Bekken, Utah Phillips (Introduction by), and Fred Thompson. Many histories have been written of the Industrial Workers of the World, often called the Wobblies. Founded in 1905 in hopes of uniting the working class into One Big Union, the IWW promoted industrial organization at a time when craft unionism was the established pattern. The IWW welcomed all workers, regardless of ethnicity, race or gender when other unions boasted of their exclusionary policies. Its reliance on direct action on the job generated much of the strategy and tactics of the modern labor movement. Often referred to as the singing union, Wobblies wrote hundreds of labor songs and published millions of copies of their Little Red Songbook. The IWW's theme song, "Solidarity Forever," became the anthem of the entire American labor movement.

The IWW: Its First 100 Years is the most comprehensive history of the union ever published. Written by two Wobblies who lived through many of the struggles they chronicle, it documents the famous struggles such as the Lawrence and Paterson strikes, the fight for decent conditions in the Pacific Northwest timber fields, the IWW's pioneering organizing among harvest hands in the 1910s and 1920s, and the wartime repression that sent thousands of IWW members to jail. But it is the only general history to give substantive attention to the IWW's successful organizing of African-American and immigrant dock workers on the Philadelphia waterfront, the international union of seamen the IWW built from 1913 through the 1930s, smaller job actions through which the IWW, Wobbly successes organizing in manufacturing in the 1930s and 1940s, and the union's recent resurgence. Extensive source notes provide guidance to readers wishing to explore particular campaigns in more depth. There is no better history for the reader looking for an overview of the history of the Industrial Workers of the World, and for an understanding of its ideas and tactics. Includes nearly 60 photographs and illustrations, and brief forward from Utah Phillips -- $20.00

Solidarity Forever: an Oral History of the IWW - compiled by Stewart Bird, Dan Georgakas, and Deborah Shaffer. Transcriptions of the interviews from which the film The Wobblies was made featuring reminiscences by old-timers who participated in the great struggles of the teens and twenties. A score of IWWs tell how they fought against these injustices while advocating a new economic system in which production would be geared for the public good rather than for private profit. They speak at length of the life and culture of a modern working class during its formative years, often touching on historic labor struggles as well as more humble local conflicts. Told with vigor and humor, these first-hand accounts attest to the IWW passion for mass education, popular culture, and grass roots democracy, and they reveal an IWW far more ideologically sophisticated than is generally acknowledged. Historical essays preface these personal stories and place them in the context of the IWW commitment to civil liberties, women's rights, organizing the unorganized, and racial equality. Contains much material left out of the movie. -- $13.00

Wobblies!; A Graphic History - Edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulma

A vibrant history in graphic art of the “Wobblies," published for the centenary of the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The stories of the hard-rock miners’ shooting wars, young Elizabeth Gurly Flynn (the “Rebel Girl�? of contemporary sheet music), the first -sit-down strikes and Free Speech fights, Emma Goldman and the struggle for birth control access, the Pageant for Paterson orchestrated in Madison Square Garden, bohemian radicals John Reed and Louise Bryant, field-hand revolts and lumber workers’ strikes, wartime witch hunts, government prosecutions and mob lynching, Mexican-American uprisings in Baja, and Mexican peasant revolts led by Wobblies, hilarious and sentimental songs created and later revived—all are here, and much, much more.

Contributors include Carlos Cortez (former editor of the Industrial Worker), Harvey Pekar (author of American Splendor), Peter Kuper (current artist of Mad’s Spy vs. Spy), Sue Coe, Seth Tobocman, Chris Cardinale, Ryan Inzana, Tom Keough, Spain Rodriques, Trina Robbins, Sharon Rudahl, and the circle of artists for World War 3 Illustrated.

256 Pages; B&W Illustrated -- $23.00

(Temporarily Out of Stock.)

The Rebel Girl - By Elizabeth Gurley-Flynn. Gurley-Flynn's autobiography of her Wobbly years, from teenage soapbox orator to IWW organizer. Covers some of the great labor struggles from the vantage point of a key participant. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is truly one of the great working class heroes of the last century, a woman who touched thousands of workers' lives, who was a spirited radical speaker and champion of civil liberties. As a young woman, Flynn was a renown labor orator and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and became nationally recognized for labor organizing and agitation. Later in her life, she was a leader of the Communist Party, USA, eventually becoming its National Chairperson, the only woman to have held that post. -- $12.00

History of the Labor Movement in the United States vol. 4: The Industrial Workers of the World -- By Philip Foner. Part of Foner's pioneering history of the labor movement, this volume covers the early history of the IWW from its founding in 1905 through 1917, on the eve of the wartime repression. Foner has found a wealth of information by consulting contemporary newspapers as well as documentary sources -- $15.00

Additional material about the IWW can be found in Volumes 7 and 8 of Foner's History of the Labor Movement in the United States, available from International Publishers

Harvest Wobblies: The Industrial Workers of the World and Agricultural Laborers in the American West, 1905-1930. - By Greg Hall. Increased mechanization and the expansion of new markets transformed the face of American farming in the early decades of the twentieth century, especially in the American West. These changes demanded a new kind of agricultural worker--gone was the local farmhand, replaced by a cheap and temporary labor force of migrant and seasonal workers. Greg Hall's fascinating book analyzes how the IWW organized these men, women, and sometimes children who had become so essential and yet so exploited on the farms of the West. Hall examines the diverse and changing nature of the agricultural work force, offering a social and cultural history of a union uniquely suited to organizing tens of thousands of migrant and seasonal workers. -- $35.00 (hardcover only)

Wobbly War; The Centralia Story - By John McClelland, Jr. Relates the story of the Centralia, Washington conflict between the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Legionaires on Armistice Day, 1919.

Labor came into the twentieth century fighting. The fiercest fighters were the Wobblies -- the Industrial Workers of the World -- fighting against the implacable opponents of all that they stood for, including such goals as the eight-hour day. An employer class, recently emerged from the industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century, was by no means ready for higher labor costs.

This book is about that conflict as it pertains to the IWW and it focuses on the most dramatic and violent episode of what amounted to a war of extermination -- the Centralia case.

Hardcover; illustrated; 242 pages -- $15.00

Break Their Haughty Power: Joe Murphy in the Heyday of the Wobblies, a biographical novel by Eugene Nelson - Joe Murphy, chased out of his Missouri hometown by anti-Catholic bigots, hopped aboard a freight train and headed west for the wheat harvest. Within weeks, the 13-year-old Joe became a labor activist and organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or "Wobblies"). Eugene Nelson, a longtime friend of Joe Murphy, recounts many labor and free-speech struggles through the eyes of "Kid Murphy." The Wobblies built a dynamic mass movement, and this biographical novel relates Murphy's adventures in the wheat fields, lumber camps, and on the high seas. Historical events include the 1919 Centralia massacre in Washington state; the Colorado coal miners' strike of 1927; and the 1931 strike by workers building Boulder Dam. Nelson also relates the young Murphy's reflections on meeting Helen Keller, Eugene Debs, and Bill Haywood.

367 pages; illustrated with 16 photos - $16.00

Oil, Wheat, & Wobblies; The Industrial Workers of the World in Oklahoma, 1905-1930 - by Nigel A. Sellars. The Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, a radical labor union, played an important role in Oklahoma between the founding of the union in 1905 and its demise in 1930. In Oil, Wheat, & Wobblies, Nigel Anthony Sellars describes IWW efforts to organize migratory harvest hands and oil-field workers in the state and relationships between the union and other radical and labor groups such as the Socialist Party and the American Federation of Labor. Focusing on the emergence of migratory labor and the nature of the work itself in industrializing the region, Sellars provides a social history of labor in the Oklahoma wheat belt and the mid-continent oil fields. Using court cases and legislation, he examines the role of state and federal government in suppressing the union during World War I. Oil, Wheat, & Wobblies concludes with a description of the IWW revival and subsequent decline after the war, suggesting that the decline is attributable more to the union.s failure to adapt to postwar technological change, its rigid attachment to outmoded tactics, and its internal policy disputes, than to political repression.

367 pages; illustrated with 16 photos - $15.00 (hardcover only)

Additional Books about the IWW and Individual Wobblies

Words on Fire: The Life and Writing of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - edited by Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall. Both a biography and a collection of writings, this book tells Flynn's story, as well as discussing her influence in politics and activist circles. The collection includes analyses of strikes and class struggle, Wobbly speeches, views on women¹s rights, articles on housework and fashion, as well as love poems and letters describing the daily life, joys, and sorrows of a leftist organizer. -- $10.00

Iron In Her Soul: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left - By Helen Camp. The first full-length biography of IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and her later career in the ACLU and the Communist Party. -- $10.00

Gentle Rebel: Letters of Eugene V. Debs - The intent of this volume is to make accessible to the student and lay reader an abridged edition of the highly acclaimed 'Letters of Eugene V. Debs, 1874-1926'. Included are approximately five hundred of the most interesting and significant letters from the three-volume work, also edited by J. Robert Constantine. -- $10.00

The World at Her Fingertips: The Story of Helen Keller - by Joan Dash. The story of Helen Keller is well-known, but this biography covers the entire scope of her life including her years in the IWW and the socialist movement. Winner of the American Library Association's Best Book for Young Adults award. -- $8.00 (hardcover only)

The Case of Joe Hill - By Philip Foner. The dean of American labor historians proves that IWW songwriter and organizer Joe Hill was framed by the Utah authorities; Foner's detailed account includes all the ugly details of this famous case. -- $6.00

A Tale of Three Cities - By David J. Goldberg. A history of efforts by textile workers in Paterson and Passaic, New Jersey, and Lawrence, Mass., to organize a permanent industrial union between 1916 and 1921, efforts that built upon earlier IWW campaigns but were ultimately unable to overcome internal divisions. -- $10.00

Rebel Pen: The Writings of Mary Heaton Vorse -- Edited by Dee Garrison. Mary Heaton Vorse was a leading labor journalist and feminist in the first half of the twentieth century, covering major labor struggles from the IWW's Lawrence textile strike to the sit-down strikes of the 1930s to the fight against corruption in the maritime unions in the 1950s. This collection reprints some of her most significant articles, as well as discussing Vorse's struggle to reconcile the demands of motherhood with those of her career. -- $10.00

The Great Bisbee Deportation - by Rob E. Hanson Wobblies so worried the authorities of Bisbee, Arizona, that the state ran them out of town. This comprehensive account brings the events of the day alive. -- $2.50

Battling For American Labor . By Howard Kimeldorf. In this incisive reinterpretation of the history of the American labor movement, Howard Kimeldorf challenges received thinking about rank-and- file workers and the character of their unions. Battling for American Labor answers the baffling question of how, while mounting some of the most aggressive challenges to employing classes anywhere in the world, organized labor in the United States has warmly embraced the capitalist system of which they are a part. Rejecting conventional understandings of American unionism, Kimeldorf argues that what has long been the hallmark of organized labor in the United States--its distinctive reliance on worker self-organization and direct economic action--can be seen as a particular kind of syndicalism.

Kimeldorf brings this syndicalism to life through two rich and compelling case studies of unionization efforts by Philadelphia longshoremen and New York City culinary workers during the opening decades of the twentieth century. He shows how these workers, initially affiliated with the radical IWW and later the conservative AFL, pursued a common logic of collective action at the point of production that largely dictated their choice of unions. Elegantly written and deeply engaging, Battling for American Labor offers insights not only into how the American labor movement got to where it is today, but how it might possibly reinvent itself in the years ahead -- $12.00

Big Trouble - By J. Anthony Lukas. This richly detailed narrative of one of the major labor frame-ups of the 20th century examines the prosecution of three mineworkers union officials, including IWW cofounder Big Bill Haywood, for the assassination of an Idaho governor who spent his career cozying up to the mine bosses. -- $15.00 (hardcover only)

The Corpse on Boomerang Road; Telluride's War on Labor 1899-1908 - By Mary Joy Martin.

On August 8, 1907, newspapers in Telluride, Colorado, declared that the bones of William J. Barney had been recovered from a shallow grave on Boomerang Hill, thus proving the Telluride Miners' Union had butchered him in 1901. Many mine owners, newspaper editors, and Pinkerton detectives claimed the union had inaugurated a reign of terror with Barney's slaying, a nightmare of brutality that would end only when the union men and their families were driven from the region.

The belief that the Miners' Union was a pack of assassins and its victims were numerous has endured for more than a hundred years. Yet meticulous research has revealed no reign actually existed, and the alleged victims were, in fact, alive long after their alleged murders.

The Corpse on Boomerang Road: Telluride's War on Labor, 1899-1908, not only shatters long-held convictions, it also unravels several murder cases and exonerates those unjustly accused.

392 pages - $19.95 (hardcover only)

A Hubert Harrison Reader - Edited with introduction & notes by Jeffrey B. Perry. Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) was a brilliant writer, orator, educator, critic, and radical political activist and he is one of the most important, yet neglected figures of early twentieth-century America. The historian Joel A. Rogers, in World's Great Men of Color, described him as "the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time" and the leader with the sanest program. A. Philip Randolph referred to him as "the father of Harlem Radicalism." Harrison was drawn toward the policies and practices of the militant and egalitarian IWW, whom he considered to be practitioners of true unionism. He argued for direct action and point-of-production organizing and praised the work of the integrated IWW-affiliated Brotherhood of Timber Workers in Louisiana. Besides being an excellent collection of nearly forgotten writings by Harrison, the overall work poses interesting questions on the concepts of multi-cultural unionism, political action, and "Race First" organizations. -- $25.00

Free Speech in its Forgotten Years, 1870.1920 - By David M. Rabban.

Most American historians and legal scholars incorrectly assume that controversies and litigation about free speech began abruptly during World War I. However, there was substantial debate about free speech issues between the Civil War and World War I. Important free speech controversies, often involving the activities of sex reformers and labor unions, preceded the Espionage Act of 1917. Scores of legal cases presented free speech issues to Justices Holmes and Brandeis. A significant organization, the Free Speech League, became a principled defender of free expression two decades before the establishment of the ACLU in 1920. World War I produced a major transformation in American liberalism. Progressives who had viewed constitutional rights as barriers to needed social reforms came to appreciate the value of political dissent during its wartime repression. They subsequently misrepresented the prewar judicial hostility to free speech claims and obscured prior libertarian defenses of free speech based on commitments to individual autonomy.

404 pages - $10.00 (hardcover only)

The Court-Martial of Mother Jones - Edited by Edward M. Steel. The transcript of the 1913 trial by a military court of labor agitator Mother Jones and 47 other workers on charges stemming from the long coal miners' strike in the Paint and Cabin Creek areas of West Virginia. Steel provides a thoughtful introduction to the trial and Mother Jones' critical role in the strikes, for a rewarding marriage of primary documents and historical analysis. -- $12.00

Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs - by Marguerite Young. Recounts episodes from Debs' early life, with historical discussion that ranges freely across the entire length and breadth of 19th-century America and Europe, touching on the great American railway strike of 1877, the poetic careers of Heinrich Heine and James Whitcomb Riley, and the workings of the Russian secret police under Czar Nicholas I. -- $18.00 (hardcover only)