There is really a lot to this story that would affect the Nation for years to come. The strike started because the Pullman factory which made the Pullman railroad cars reduced wages to their workers in the factory. What they did not lower was the rent they paid, the cost for fuel to their homes or for food. You see what are fine schools do not teach any more is that before unions when you worked for some companies you also had to live at their housing and shop at their store, etc…. This of course was owned by the person who owned the company. Many people think it just happened in the mines but no it was throughout most businesses for a long period of time. The strike was about being fair if you cut our wages cut the other items as well. They said no. The author will take you through the strike and how it was handle on both sides’ right and wrong. The Attorney General the President Cleveland hand was a lawyer for the railroads just prior to taking the position so there was not a conflict of interest at all. The deaths that occurred started to cause some panic and that is when the Attorney General started having troops go along with the trains because he put mail bags in the Pullman cars. Clarence Darrow a fighter for the people and for the beginning of unions fought against the government and they did drop one charge but still charged the man main man with jail time. Overall a very good story about our history. The Pullman Company did last until 1950 and the homes just went into the Southside of Chicago.

Nonfiction about the boycott of Pullman sleeping railroad cars in 1894, led by Eugene V. Debs and suppressed by President Cleveland, his attorney general Richard Olney, and General Nelson Miles. The strike – which started with workers in the factories who built Pullman's cars, spread to all employees of all railroads carrying the cars, and nearly became a nationwide general strike (ie, involving members of all unions, regardless of their line of work, from grocers to butchers to brewers) – at its height involved 250,000 people and ended with over fifty deaths, mostly caused by railword agents or federal soldiers. Although the strike ultimately failed, it can be seen as a tipping point between the railroad barons of the Gilded Age and the attempts at social reform of the Progressive Era.

Many famous figures make appearances in The Edge of Anarchy, from Jane Addams to Andrew Carnegie, as well as events of the day, including Chicago's Columbian Exposition (of The Devil in the White City fame), Lizzie Borden's trial, the economic depression of 1893, mine strikes in 1894, and the assassination of French president Carnot. But ultimately the focus is on the opposing figures of Debs and George Pullman himself, union leader versus businessman, the one who lost this battle but ended up as a major political force against the one who won this time but found himself losing subsequent legal cases, alienated from even other business tycoons, and dying soon afterwards.

I do have to say that The Edge of Anarchy isn't quite as good as Kelly's previous book, Heaven's Ditch (which remains the best nonfiction I've read in some time), though that's mostly because Kelly has chosen to work with a less batshit wild story this time. I also wish Kelly had paid more attention to how race influenced the Pullman Strike. African Americans, though not allowed to work in Pullman's factories, were important employees of the sleeping cars once they were on the railroads, yet were not allowed to join the American Railway Union. Kelly does acknowledge these facts, but I felt they should have been central to the story rather than isolated to one or two chapters.

Nonetheless, The Edge of Anarchy does make for perfect reading at our particular moment in time, when we seem to be in a new Gilded Age of unregulated business practices and presidential candidates can once again actually call themselves socialists. It's always nice to be reminded that socialism in fact has a long and influential history within the US.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2782006576

The Edge of Anarchy: The Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America is an interesting read. I give it three and a half stars.

I find the Gilded Age to be a fascinating time in American history, but I know very little about it. In "The Edge of Anarchy," Jack Kelly provides great insight into this time by describing the Pullman boycott of 1894 and the events leading up to it. Kelly vividly illustrates the dichotomy between the working class and the ultra-wealthy, and he profiles some of the famous names of the era, such as Eugene V. Debs, George Pullman, and Grover Cleveland.
I was hooked to this book from beginning to end. Kelly has a very engaging writing style, and the book read more like a novel than a historical account. Because so many things happen during such a short time span, I did get confused by the timeline in a couple of places. Also, the depiction of Debs seemed overly positive. While that may have been completely accurate, it seems like it could have been a little more balanced.
All in all, an excellent book that I highly recommend.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advance copy.

This book is well researched and written. The author has a writing style that makes the subject engaging and read less like a history rescitation and more like a story. The subtitle of "The Railroad Barons, The Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America" is an accurate description of the book although it focuses mostly on the Pullman strike. The two main individuals in the book are Eugene Debs and George Pullman and their vastly differrent approaches in trying to settle (or not settle) worker grievances against the Pullman companty. It clearly lays out how the railroads used the federal government under President Grover Cleveland to surpress an already overworked and underpaid constituency. 

I recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in railroad history or the beginning of the development of the labor union movement.

I received a free Kindle copy of The Edge of Anarchy by Jack Kelly courtesy of Net Galley  and St. Martins Press, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book as I am a fan of railroads and their history and I have not read a great deal about the subject of the book. This is the first book by the author that I have read.

The Edge of Anarchy, chronicles the largest uprising of workers in Us history in the 1890s it was the height of the Gilded Age when there was a large gulf between the haves and the have nots. Fact filled and informative I recommend to any fan of the time period or us history in general

I’m not a big reader of nonfiction, but I love history and enjoy learning about an episode in history of which I was previously unaware. So, I was drawn to The Edge of Anarchy, which details the largest uprising of US workers. The 1890s were the height of the Gilded Age and like today, one of those periods when there was a large gulf between the haves and the have nots. In fact, the similarities between the two time periods is one of the things that drew me to the book. In 1893, the US economy suffered a crash and a following recession. Railroad manual job wages were cut to starvation levels.

The story concentrates on Eugene Debs, who had the idea of creating an industrial union for all members involved in the railroads, not individual unions for each specific job. On the opposite side was George Pullman. Pullman pulled himself up by his bootstraps, to use an old phrase. A creative business genius, he not only had new ideas for railroad cars, but also designed a town for his employees. But he was all about making money and didn’t care how many of his workers starved so long as is businesses were profitable. “Both Debs and Pullman were fighting for deeply held principles: community versus self-interest, cooperation versus competition, equality versus liberty. On this anniversary of independence, each felt that he was a patriot upholding the best of the American tradition.”

The depression also led to the creation of civilian armies, bands of the unemployed marching on DC. Their leaders actually had some ideas that FDR would later employ to help during the Great Depression. But Grover Cleveland was no FDR.

The book is well written and well researched. It moves at a brisk pace and kept my interest. I loved how Kelly lined all the dominoes up so we could watch them fall. The best historical nonfiction books make you feel part of the time and place. Kelly does just that.

I highly recommend this book to lovers of history. Fans of Candice Millard or Erik Larson will enjoy this.

My thanks to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance copy of this book.