About the Author

For more than thirty years and over the course of seven presidencies, Robert Shogan covered the political scene from Washington as national political correspondent for Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Government at the Center for Study of American Government of Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Reviews

Richard L. Trumka Secretary-Trearurer, AFL-CIO, and Past President, United Mine Workers of America

"Here is a book about forgotten events that took place 80 years ago in a little understood corner of our nation. What a surprise that Bob Shogan has not only found ample documentary evidence to convince us of the historical significance of these battles between miners and mine owners in southern WV, but also spun a rip roaring tale full of shockingly vivid and down-to-earth portraits of determined miners, all-powerful mine owners, private security goons, state officials virtually in the service of the owners, and federal officials whose intervention was sought by both sides. When the tale is told, Shogan's conclusion seems irrefutable: our nation paid a heavy price in economic justice and social progress when state and federal authorities failed to ensure workers' basic freedom to form unions."

David Kusnet chief speechwriter for former president Bill Clinton (1992-1994), and author of Speaking American: How the Democrats Can Win in the Nineties

"Bob Shogan has covered seven presidents and countless political campaigns. Now he tells the story of a forgotten chapter of American history - an armed uprising by 10,000 West Virginia coal miners against the coal companies that dominated their lives, exploited their labor, and controlled their state government. This book is a riveting refutation of the comforting conventional wisdom that there has never been class struggle in America."

Cecil Roberts president, United Mine Workers of America

"Robert Shogan sheds new light on this long-neglected episode of the labor movement's ongoing struggle for workers' rights. For too long, the significant Battle of Blair Mountain has been merely a footnote in American history books. Now, the real story of America's largest labor uprising - and the largest armed insurrection on U.S. soil since the Civil War - comes alive. The Battle of Blair Mountain vividly describes the 10-day pitched battle fought in 1921 when more than 10,000 union coal miners marched on Logan County, W.Va., clashing with state militia and anti-union coal-company thugs. As a native of Cabin Creek, W.Va. - and the great-nephew of the miners' commander, Bill Blizzard - I take personal interest in reading about my union's pivotal role in this historic rebellion for economic and social justice."

Joseph A. McCartin Georgetown University, author of Labor's Great War

"From atop Blair Mountain, Robert Shogan has conjured a vivid vision of modern America in the making in the bloody coal field struggles 1920s West Virginia. Infused with the humane intelligence of one of our most distinguished political correspondents, this haunting tale restores a shocking chapter of American history to its rightful place in this nation's unfolding saga of democratic aspirations and shattered dreams. It is a rare gem of a book."

Alonzo L. Hamby Distinguished Professor of History Ohio University, and author of For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s

"Robert Shogan's exciting, fast-paced narrative of the West Virginia labor-management wars in the early twentieth century skillfully recreates a time in which America was two nations, sharply divided by class and, in extreme situations, ready to fight to a finish. That we have moved beyond that era is all the more reason why we should remember it and never recreate it."

Stephen C. Schlesinger author of Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations

"A stirring history of one of the signal struggles in American unionism. The Blair Mountain uprising illuminates a dark chapter in America's quest for worker equality - and reminds us that only organized labor can ameliorate a class conflict that has always wracked American society."

Nelson Lichtenstein University of California, Santa Barbara; author of State of the Union: A Century of American Labor

"Robert Shogan's gripping account of this long-lost insurrection puts us at the center of one of the most dramatic episodes in American labor history. But equally important, his narrative reminds us that at the heart of every strike is a potential civil war whose moral dichotomies are every bit as stark as those illuminated by Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass in the crusade they led against chattel slavery."

U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV)

"Robert Shogan's riveting chronicle of The Battle of Blair Mountain brings to life the long neglected and almost forgotten story of America's greatest insurrection since the Civil War. While ostensibly about a strife between labor and management, this book vividly demonstrates that it was an event with far deeper implications for the fabric of our history. I shudder to think what life would be like for the working men and women of the 21st Century if the West Virginia coal miners, 10,000 strong, had not mustered the courage nearly a century ago to take up arms and storm the heights of that Applachian ridge."

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