"Seeking to reclaim a history that has remained largely ignored by most historians, this dramatic and stirring account examines each of the definitive American cooperative movements for social change--farmer, union, consumer, and communalist--that have been all but erased from collective memory. Focusing far beyond one particular era, organization, leader, or form of cooperation, For All the People documents the multigenerational struggle of the American working people for social justice. While the economic system was in its formative years, generation after generation of American working people challenged it by organizing visionary social movements aimed at liberating themselves from what they called wage slavery. Workers substituted a system based on cooperative work and constructed parallel institutions that would supercede the institutions of the wage system. With an expansive sweep and breathtaking detail, this scholarly yet eminently readable chronicle follows the American worker from the colonial workshop to the modern mass-assembly line, from the family farm to the corporate hierarchy, ultimately painting a vivid panorama of those who built the United States and those who will shape its future. John Curl, with over forty years of experience as both an active member and scholar of cooperatives, masterfully melds theory, practice, knowledge and analysis, to present the definitive history from below of cooperative America." -- Publisher's description

An adult novel about the world of children. In McCarthy-era New York City, fourth graders find a forgotten room in the foundations of a building, where they struggle to live their dreams. As the cold war of 1950s America envelops their school, they become radicalized. “Novels such as John Curl’s The Outlaws of Maroon, which capture a child’s point of view and examine the intersection of history and social justice, hold an important place in American literature. Think of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Books such as these both illuminate moments in history and remind us to pay attention to children: we can learn from them, for they are paying attention to the world.” — Lucille Lang Day