In September 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle said this about the author and book:
Philip Dray, the author of "There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Struggle of Labor in America," comes into the ring with fists flying, and he doesn't let up for a moment. If you love Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," you'll probably love Dray's history, too, with its pageantry and its celebratory prose that shines a bright light of compassion and understanding on ordinary workingmen, women and children. Yes, even American children with white skins toiled 10 hours a day in factories long before corporations moved overseas and put Indian and Pakistani kids to work making shirts and sneakers. Dispassionate historians might find Dray's narrative too often romanticized. They'd have a point. Indeed, his labor heroes tend to be "courageous," to speak "with all heart" and, when they're mowed down by the militia, the streets are awash in "carnage." Still, it's difficult if not impossible to omit colorful language from a book about American workers. The story of unions in America is, as Dray points out, an epic struggle that seemed at times to be fought between good and evil. Nineteenth century labor activists called their initially underground organization the Knights of Labor as though they sprang from the court of King Arthur. As Dray shows, workers saw themselves engaged in an apocalyptic battle to give birth to a new world of economic justice. They could not help but speak as though they were the saviors of humanity from the perceived evils of capitalism.
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