In this classic interpretation of the 1930s rise of industrial unionism, Gary Gerstle challenges the popular historical notion that American workers' embrace of "Americanism" and other patriotic sentiments in the post-World War I years indicated their fundamental political conservatism. He argues that Americanism was a complex, even contradictory, language of nationalism that lent itself to a wide variety of ideological constructions in the years between World War I and the onset of the Cold War. Using the rich and textured material left behind by New England's most powerful textile union-the Independent Textile Union of Woonsocket, Rhode Island-Gerstle uncovers for the first time a more varied and more radical working-class discourse. | Working-Class Americanism by Gary Gerstle, Paperback | Indigo Chapters