Title: Read the first 300 pages
Review: The first half of this book is an interesting history of California labor and radical politics - stuff they don't teach in school, but as the timeline moves towards WWII the book degenerates into a rant about the California Communist Party. The author has a passionate distate for Harry Bridges that colors much of the subsequent discussion. I also have to say that some of the "facts" presented are tenuous, especially for a journalist. Information about Oppenheimer is controversial at best, and he seems to use some facts out of context to advance the vehement anti-CP line.I should note that I read this book in Paris which made me laugh out loud about some the claims the author makes about the importance of California radicals on world politics and intellectual history. In the end, I wish this was a 300 page book stripped of most of the author's more outrageous opinions and presented as a good history that is seldom read.
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