It IS May Day. If everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, then shouldn’t everyone be a pinko on May Day?
Here are some of my favorite lefty reads:
- Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith. – it’s this book that caused me to start referring to the Empire State Building as “The Al Smith Building.”
- Living My Life – Emma Goldman’s Autobiography. This is where that oft-misquoted “If I can’t dance” line comes from.
- Myra Page’s Daughter of the Hills – a novel about women in coal miner communities (likewise, I’d suggest The Day the Earth Caved In, which is about the coal town of Centralia.)
- U.S.A. – the trilogy by John Dos Passos, and the book Norman Mailer referred to as “the last great American novel.”
- Silences – by Tillie Olsen. One of the best books, still, about the working class.
More as this election season teeters on.