The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs

by Ray Ginger, Mike Davis (Introduction)

Overview

Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning. —Eugene Debs in 1918

Orator, organizer, self-taught scholar, presidential candidate, and prisoner, Eugene Debs’ lifelong commitment to the fight for a better world is chronicled in this unparalleled biography by historian Ray Ginger. This moving story presents the definitive account of the life and legacy of the most eloquent spokesperson and leader of the U.S. labor and socialist movements.

With a new introduction by Mike Davis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781931859400
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	01/01/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	540
Sales rank:	739,258
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Ray Ginger was the author of many books on American history. Mike Davis is the author of many books on American politics, the environment and urban issues, including the bestselling Ecology of Fear.

Editorial Reviews

“"The best biography of Eugene Debs yet published….A valuable contribution to the history of American political and economic radicalism.”
——American Historical Review

“"Masterful.”
——Michael Harrington

“"The Bending Cross offers us an old-fashioned—and, yes, incorrigibly romantic—ethos for activism; an antidote to jaded postmodernist cynicism, made compelling and coherent by the example of Debs’s own life. It is ironic that the Socialist leader was imprisoned for ‘disloyalty,’ since what most distinguished Debs was his moral steadfastness and unbreakable loyalty to the labor movement.”
——Mike Davis, from the Introduction

"The Bending Cross is a beautiful and important book, even after all these years and the further accumulation of scholarship on the life of Eugene V. Debs. Ray Ginger, a socialist scholar of the heart as well as the mind, captured the real Debs. Hurrah for this reprinting!"
—Paul Buhle, co-scriptwriter of Eugene V..Debs: A Graphic Biography

From the Publisher