The Siege of Blair Mountain

The Great Gatsby to the contrary, the so-called Roaring Twenties were not only about loose morality and a devil-may-care display of opulence.  In the byways of America, working men and women were seeking labor justice and struggling against the entrenched powers of capitalism.  Nowhere was this struggle more poignant and important than in the coalfields of West Virginia.  There in the 1920s the United Mine Workers confronted the coal operators who sought to bust their union.  The ensuing conflict, violent and bloody, had much to say about the future of relations between working people and their bosses in America.  Robert Shogan tells the gripping story of the virtual war that came to West Virginia and scared hell out of both the state government and officials in Washington.  It’s a story worth repeating in today’s corporate America.