Chronicling the best wing of the Democrats at their best moment, this fascinating study demonstrates how bottom-up workplace organizing and relatively autonomous state policy were intertwined at a turning point in US history.

Davin pushes back against portrayals of insurgent workers as simply the victims of Democratic co-optation. Instead he vividly illustrates how blue-collar Pennsylvania unions transformed their local Democratic parties into instruments for democracy against entrenched economic and political authoritarianism.

This classic edited volume is chock-full of insights into how the Democrat Party’s limitations and contradictions in the decades following World War II alienated key constituencies and paved the way for the implosion of the New Deal order.