Examining the social and intellectual collision of the American reform tradition with immigrant Marxism during the Reconstruction era, Timothy Messer-Kruse charts the rise and fall of the International Workingman's Association (IWA), the first international socialist organization. "An absorbing, well-researched study. . . . Should bring renewed attention to a crucial moment in the history of the American Left and inspire fresh thinking about the sources and potential for social change in our own time." -- New England Quarterly "An important and timely contribution to the growing literature on nineteenth century American radicalism. . . . Messer-Kruse does a superb job recapturing the radicalism of the American activists about whom he writes. . . . Messer Kruse's book is a welcome advance by the New Labor History onto a terrain long held without real challenge by other old-fashioned Marxist scholars." -- Labour History Review "Messer-Kruse's work is an entertaining examination of the events, circumstances, and personalities that led to the formation, organization, and disintegration of the American branch of Karl Marx's International Workingmen's Association." -- CHOICE "This fresh and provocative study of the First International's suppressed American branch shows that the idealism of antebellum reformers remained vital to the Gilded Age labor movement. Messer-Kruse's reappraisal of 'Yankee socialism' not only scores points against Marxist orthodoxy; it may well lead scholars to reconfigure the history of the American Left." -- Carl J. Guarneri, author of The Utopian Alternative The collision of two radical theories of social change Examines the clash of the American reform tradition with immigrant Marxism during Reconstruction through the story of the rise and fall of the International Workingman s Association, the first international socialist organization. Examines the clash of the American reform tradition with immigrant Marxism during Reconstruction through the story of the rise and fall of the International Workingman•s Association, the first international socialist organization. Timothy Messer-Kruse is assistant professor of labor history at the University of Toledo. Used Book in Good Condition