Industrial Valley (Literature of American Labor)

Ruth McKenney's compelling novel of class and industrial conflict in Akron, Ohio, first appeared in 1939 and was widely acclaimed. McKenney was a capable journalist who had spent a year and a half in Akron, the heart of the tire industry, a city that she said "smells like a rubber band smoldering in an ashtray."

Industrial Valley vividly portrays an industrial city crippled by the country's economic failures and also provides a stirring example of fiction predicated on social and political principles. It will intrigue readers for its contemporary as well as its historical implications. The images McKenney evokes of workers confused and enraged by a moribund economy seem startlingly relevant today.

"For sheer dramatic excitement, for effective organization as a story, there isn't one among all the strike novels to match this essentially true story."

(New York Herald Tribune)

"Industrial Valley is perhaps the best American example of proletarian literature. Even though it is based completely on fact, I also offer it as one of our best collective novels."

(New Republic)

"Vividly portrays an industrial city crippled by the country's economic failures and also provides a stirring example of fiction predicated on social and political principles."

(Midwest Book Review)

"This is reporting with a purpose; it is fact selected to provide illumination, not fact reported as a record of rainfall, and the result is brilliant history."

(New Masses)