An excellent look at a forgotten folk hero of the American labor movement. It's got everything, a life of an agitator going up and down across the country writing songs and fighting the good fight to a courtroom drama where the system itself condemned a man for simply belonging to a movement that the powers that be despised.

This fellow deserves a place in the Parthenon of American heroes, and is frighteningly relevant today as we've still got the issues of rich folks screwing the poor and a government that seems like it'd rather protect the money than act for the people.

I dreamed I read a biography of Joe Hill last night. Actually I did, but really most of Joe's short life is a mystery and the book focuses primarily on his arrest for murder in Salt Lake City, the evidence (some of it new) which proves he didn't do it, and the miscarriage of justice that ultimately resulted in his execution, despite pleas from everyone including President Wilson. The middle part of the book, which focuses on the rise of the IWW and the various freedom of speech actions in Fresno, etc., was the best. It was amazing how the IWW could rally thousands of people to support such actions. The saddest part is how after Joe's death the coming of WW I resulted in a crackdown on the IWW as anti-American. It was an interesting book and I learned some interesting labor history.

Despite a passing familiarity with the IWW, and some of the labor history of the early 20th century, I'd never heard of Joe Hill(strom) until I heard one of his songs by a local folk-punk band. That led me to this book, and it's quite a story. It's a bit as if someone had taken a chapter from Howard Zinn's "A People's History" and made it come to life in one person.

The book covers Hill's journey from Sweden to the US and his life as itinerant worker, part-time revolutionary in Mexico, union organizer and unofficial poet of the IWW, and how that got him charged with murder in Salt Lake City. What this book adds to the story that no previous one did, is a fairly strong (but not perfect) confirmation of his alibi in the case that got him executed by the state of Utah.

It also documents quite well the power of the "gilded age" robber barons in the fight against labor and the complicity of state governments in particular working for them and against the common worker, not to mention the difficulty of getting a fair trial when you have no money; something just as true today as it was then.

Been very interested and intrigued by Joe Hill's life for a few years (not the writer obviously). The time and struggles a lot of immigrants and many others had to face in USA. Working class has never been easy but Joe Hill definitely made his mark and life known for years to come. The murder case that ended his short life was interesting to read about as well and it makes you wonder if they knew he was probably innocent all along. His life would make a very good movie or an actor played documentary that's for sure

This checked a lot of boxes for me: it’s part biography, part murder mystery, part legal drama, and part history of the American Labour movement in the early 1900s. The author has an annoying habit of using the same quotes over and over again—including, at times, full song verses—but it’s nonetheless an easy and engaging read.