Patrick Renshaw

An important addition to the Profiles in Power series, this critical biography looks at Franklin D. Roosevelt, the most dominant US politician of the 1930s and 1940s. Roosevelt led the United States through the two great crises of depression and the Second World War, making him one of the key figures of the twentieth century.

Between 1910 and 1945 the United States transformed itself into a Super Power. By 1945, with rivals in Europe and Asia shattered by world war, she dominated global economic, financial and political arrangements and monopolised the atomic bomb. This new Companion to History is an indispensable guide to this critical period in US history. It includes: chronologies listing all the major events, both foreign and domestic; social and economic history, with many tables based on inaccessible data; scores of mini-biographies; listings of the major office holders; and maps.

Does anyone save historians remember the Wobblies? This nickname for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the revolutionary labor union founded in Chicago in 1905, not so long ago was part of the vocabulary of labor and socialist movements everywhere. But few who have heard of the Wobblies know much about their history, aims, or achievements—or their impact on American labor. In this new edition of his classic study of the Wobblies, Patrick Renshaw tells the story of how they planned to combine the American working class, and eventually wage earners all over the world, into one big labor union with an industrial basis, a syndicalist philosophy, and a revolutionary aim. “A careful, balanced work.”—New York Times Book Review. “A lively introduction to a trying and violent period in American industrial history.”—Journal of American History. “The story of American trade unionism is a sorry one—dirty and tragic—and this is one of the worst chapters.”—Times Literary Supplement.