A review by benplatt
Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly

4.0

A wide-reaching, approachable overview of some of labor’s victories and failures with an eye toward curating a history of the American working class that is defined by its optimism. Kelly’s overview of the labor movement depicts a struggle that no matter how many times it gets knocked down, learns from its mistakes and comes back stronger. Amidst the current upsurge of labor activity in the United States, that can be an encouraging history to read and learn from, although because of this book’s expansive scope, it is necessarily broader than it is deep. This is a solid jumping-off point on some of the labor organizing that has occurred across a variety of industries, including some outside the traditional scope of labor journalism. The book’s optimism doesn’t resonate with me, and I find myself wishing for a deeper examination of the many failures that organized labor in the United State has suffered in order to learn not just from labor’s successes, but also its shortcomings. But this book isn’t meant to be a particularly deep study of any single organizing event! It’s a broad primer covering some of the labor fights that have occurred on American soil and it does a good job introducing a reader to this history.