The iconic leader of one of America’s most powerful unions, Harry Bridges put an indelible stamp on the twentieth century labor movement. Robert Cherny’s monumental biography tells the life story of the figure who built the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) into a labor powerhouse that still represents almost 30,000 workers. An Australian immigrant, Bridges worked the Pacific Coast docks. His militant unionism placed him at the center of the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike and spurred him to expand his organizing activities to warehouse laborers and Hawaiian sugar and pineapple workers. Cherny examines the overall effectiveness of Bridges as a union leader and the decisions and traits that made him effective. Cherny also details the price paid by Bridges as the US government repeatedly prosecuted him for his left-wing politics. Drawing on personal interviews with Bridges and years of exhaustive research, Harry Bridges places an extraordinary individual and the ILWU within the epic history of twentieth-century labor radicalism.

Publisher Description

Beginning with the serpent in the Garden of Eden and ending with O.J. Simpson, author George Anastaplo offers an exploration of justice and the rule of law through well-known trials both ancient and modern, real and fictional. On Trial is a detailed and fascinating discussion of legal reason, moral judgment, political life, and the events that give them meaning.

Harry Bridges is a retired detective; the police force obliged him to finish his career at the young age of 55, leaving him at a loose end. A career as a store detective follows and for five long and boring years he struggles to find any worth in life. Finally, at 60 years of age he finds himself unemployed, unmarried and at the point of ending it all. He is preparing for suicide when fate intervenes and throws an old colleague into his path who asks for help with a particularly gruesome murder. Harry finds new meaning to life and his old detective skills come to the fore. However, all is not as it seems and he finds himself embroiled in the dark world of the supernatural. Old wounds emanating from the seventeenth century are coming to the surface. The spectre of Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder general of Cromwell's era, is back in the present, pursued by his victims in a never ending game of cat and mouse. Even Harry's skill as a detective may not be a match for the dark powers that now surround him.