Born to Slovenian peasants, Louis Adamic commanded crowds, met with FDR and Truman, and built a prolific career as an author and journalist. Behind the scenes, he played a leading role in a coalition of black intellectuals and writers, working class militants, ethnic activists, and others that worked for a multiethnic America and against fascism. John Enyeart restores Adamic's life to the narrative of American history. Dogged and energetic, Adamic championed causes that ranged from ethnic and racial equality to worker's rights to anticolonialism. Adamic defied the consensus that equated being American with Anglo-Protestant culture. Instead, he insisted newcomers and their ideas kept the American identity in a state of dynamism that pushed it from strength to strength. In time, Adamic's views put him at odds with an establishment dedicated to cold war aggression and white supremacy. He increasingly fought smear campaigns and the distortion of his views--both of which continued after his probable murder in 1951.

Focusing on the political culture forged by Rocky Mountain workers from the 1870s through the 1920s, this book shows how the unique working-class politics of the region led to remarkable successes in securing progressive labor legislation. These successes--especially in improving workers' hours, wages, and safety--in turn played a central role in transforming the nation's attitudes toward workers' rights.
Examining political culture in the everyday lives of workers (from shop floors to union halls to recreation), the author uncovers a labor movement based as much on pragmatism as on ideology, and he traces how its members productively focused their efforts on political action at the local and state levels. In the process, they developed a genuinely social-democratic political culture.