The Bending Cross

A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs

by Ray Ginger Introduction by Mike Davis

$24.95 $14.97 40% off

Description

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.

Author Bios

Ray Ginger taught history at Harvard University and Brandeis.

Mike Davis (1946-2022) was a writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian. He is best known for his investigations of power and class in works such as City of Quartz, Late Victorian Holocausts, and Planet of Slums. His last two non-fiction books are Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism. He was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award.

More Info

Publication date: January 1, 2007

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

"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