Akron Public Library

King Coal is a 1917 novel by Upton Sinclair that describes the poor working conditions in the coal mining industry in the western United States during the 1910s, from the perspective of a single protagonist, Hal Warner. As in his earlier work, The Jungle, Sinclair uses the novel to express his socialist viewpoint. The book is based on the 1914-1915 Colorado coal strikes. The sequel to King Coal was posthumously published under the title, The Coal...

"David Mason's Ludlow is a magnificent novel in verse, meaning it has the speed, concision and accuracy of the best poetry along with the expansiveness and character development of a novel. It tells the searing story of a handful of immigrants - Greek, Mexican, Scottish, Italian - in southern Colorado, climaxing in the Ludlow Massacre of April 1914. Here we find the orphaned Luisa Mole, who must choose between life among the miners and the middle-class...

"A dynamic, gripping collection of short stories from "America's best novelist" (Denver Post), the New York Times-bestselling James Lee Burke. Harbor Lights is a story collection from one of the most popular and widely acclaimed icons of American fiction, featuring a never-before-published novella. These eight stories move from the marshlands on the Gulf of Mexico to the sweeping plains of Colorado to prisons, saloons, and trailer parks across the...

"By early April 1914, Colorado Governor Elias Ammons thought the violence in his state's strike-bound southern coal district had eased enough that he could begin withdrawing the Colorado National Guard, deployed six months earlier as military occupiers. But Ammons misread the signals, and on April 20, 1914, a full-scale battle erupted between the remaining militiamen and armed strikers living in a tent colony at the small railroad town of Ludlow....

Jake and Rosa, two children, form an unlikely friendship as they try to survive and understand the 1912 Bread and Roses strike of mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Describes the conditions that gave rise to efforts to secure better working conditions for the women working in the garment industry in early twentieth-century New York and led to the formation of the Women's Trade Union League and the first women's strike in 1909.

Follows Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association, as they set out on a difficult 300-mile protest march in support of farm workers' rights. A story of hope, solidarity, and perseverance, this graphic novel invites readers to immerse themselves in the life of the famous Latino American Civil Rights leader -- brought to life by gripping narrative and vivid full-color illustrations that jump off the page.