An excellent book, carefully detailing the labor and radical movement in Chicago prior to the Haymarket Affair (it starts off in 1865 around the first eight-hour movement) and then everything surrounding it. There is no real argument, except that Haymarket was a travesty of justice and that it's still important for us today. As the closing words of the book put it: "It is impossible to say exactly what might have been different if the police hadn't killed those strikers at McCormick's, if the chief inspector hadn't decided to break up the Haymarket meeting, if someone hadn't thrown the bomb, but it is clear that, in some sense, we are today living with the legacy of those long-ago events" (320).