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Big Bill Haywood was raised in Salt Lake City, because that's where his family was forced to deboard the train headed to the California Gold Rush as they realized his younger brother wasn't with them. His father passed not long after getting established in Utah. Bill had to be the man of the house since a young age. He has his first strike when he was 11 years old after her mother lent him out to a distant uncle for farm work, and the uncle wouldn't even give him a water break. By the time he is 15 he's out of school and working as a miner full time. Living in the bunk house with everyone else.

He's introducted to the ideals of socialism by an old member of the Knights of Labor and clings to it for the rest of his life.

What I found most surprising is how firmly Haywood is convienced their is no God while everyone close to him has such faith. His wife is a believer in Christian Science, his mother an Episcopalian, in whose church Haywood is confirmed only because his mom knowns no other way to legally get his name changed so that he can pay honor to his late father without a religious ceremony, and he indicates he had seen Bringham Young in the temple, so he must have spent some time in the LDS Church without actually admitting such.

Joining the Western Federation of Miners not long after he starts in his chosen profession they are able to levy for stronger involvement in many mines. Though his description of a bull pen I learned really what the boss class can do.

Never again! He lost his eye in a mining accident. By the time he was in his 30s his Fellow Workers elected him the Secretary-Treasurer of the WFM. I was surprised that after this he never went back to manual labor again. While there he set off the IWW one Big Union for all industries. The first convention in Chicago sounds like a heck of an adventure.

I was surprised, but probably shouldn't have been, that by the end of that first year of the IWW there were two different groups claiming to be the only legitmate union. In-fighting and sidetrackign since the beginning. Haywood is accused of murder, which he claims is is only because he organized well.

My "favorite" legal troupe here was the little girl who was shot by a police officer and Haywood and two additional organizers are tried as responsible for the murder because the girl wouldn't have been on the picket line to be shot if they hadn't called a Strike.

After reading his autobiography I am only further convinced that there needs to be a movie of which he is the primary subject. I still think the one scene with Haywood was the best of the 80s masterpiece "Reds"

Mexican Masks wasn't really what I hoped it would be. Cordry clearly has a great understanding of masks used by what he refers to as Mexican Indians. He lived among them for years and collected as many as he was able to barter for. He found in many states & villagers the locals had abandoned the ritualistic dances that used such masks in favor of the Catholicism of Spain that few had any idea what they were even used for anymore. I feel like Conley was trying to make a big beautiful coffee table book full of pictures of these masks from his private collection and many others'. It also appears he wanted to create a serious academic work, well cited and pear reviewed. I think what we got was neither. it was hard to read in that it would often reference photos on completely different pages, ideas are repeated many times "as stated previously..." & many other troupes that even in public school we were recommended against "I will cover that in Chapter 10." Not to mention times discussing the colors of particular masks and referincing a picture that the publisher included in B & W to save $$.

To be fair the publisher said Cordy finished the book only 2 days before he died and it was nearly 3 years later before it was published. He very well may have been trying to write two different books and his wife & UT just put them together for their simplicity.

What I liked best was the reflection of masks and dances that were continued to be used after most villagers converted to Christianity, such as images of bad gods having horns added to make them devils & demons and changing others, like say replacing a fertility god with the virgin Mary. Though most regions this is not so.

Some of his personal 1970s biases were present, like blaming the Catholic Church for opressing history, and defining art as something men did while crafts being women's work.

Given that I still was able to get done with in in like 2 weeks I believe it was worthy of "I liked it" = 3 Stars.

I was incredibly surprised how great this was from an author and a publisher I never heard of. It is as if Duncan predicted Jan 6th four years before it actually happened. Though his story goes one step further than 1/6/21 and actually may result in an all on civil war from a "tied" election. I hope the 2024 election turns out better than his 2016, but I wouldn't put it past my fellow Americans.

From beginning to end Duncan keeps you guessing. I kept wondering "is this guy a conservative or a liberal, a Republican or a Democrat" there are times both groups are shown as saintly or as complete devils. Clearly, he's not a third-party guy as there was 0 mention of any other candidates causing the downfall of America. From the main character who has been fighting for social democracy since childhood, to her born-again conservative green beret brother, to her transgender life-long friend and campaign manager, to the conservative Baptist republican nominee, to all the rondos on @Twittter that we see taking a part, not to mention her daughter with a life-threatening disease that wraps the whole story together, the characters were brilliant. I do say one very minor character gave up way too much, in fact when he appeared around 3/4 of the way through the story I almost gave up on the book as his mere name made it much clearer where the author was and how he'd get to the climax. This is the reason I give Blood Republic 4 rather than 5 stars.

I certainly would at least give them a different name if a sequel wherever to be published. The end of the book tells us to look forward to one and to subscribe to the publishers' newsletter online for more information, but alas I suspect it went out of business as the website is not accessible in 2023. It's a real shame if that's the case. Whether a sequel is published or not, some publisher really needs to get James Duncan on contract, or we'll lose a literacy genius.

If this had been the only book on libertarianism I had ever read, I would probably have become an authoritarian. I'm aware that academics often use words differently than us normies do, but the idea that there is a school of "ethics" that includes allowing one's own baby to starve to death is unfathomable.

Clearly by the 1980s Rothbard was already well on his journey right-ward from the leftist activists had the pleasure of working with in the 1960s Peace & Liberty Party and the author of radical works like "Man economy & State." He spends the whole book looking at his basis for an economic and "legal" system in a libertarian society and expanding upon those for various parts of life and society. However, he just accepts his own basis as fact and doesn't even seem to attempt to argue why that should be a basis of any thought, let alone libertarianism. This is particularly true in the first section of property ownership. There is no explanation why mixing one's labor with unowned property automatically makes it the private property of the laborer. There is no question as to the idea that an individual can be private property, even to himself, while also claiming that slavery, even so-called voluntary slavery, is unethical. There is absolutely no explanation why inheritance is considered an ethical transfer of private property rights, but a promise to do so is not. (There are plenty of reasons he says why a promise is not, but I see that as little difference than inheritance). There was a whole chapter on the transfer of land titles and the problem of tracking such back to its rightful owner, yet there was 0 reference to the obvious cases of this such as European colonialization into Australia, Africa, & the Americas. An incredible western European centric viewpoint, particularly when you consider Rothbard was an American Jew.

One thing he did do right was right in the introduction he made it clear that nothing contained within would be able to challenge Marxists ideals, including the labor-theory-of-value, as the ideas are so far apart, they can't even be compared properly.

I've been a Libertarian for over 20 years, and no argument against liberty written by a statist has come nearly close to making me question my belief in libertarianism as this one of the American libertarian right.