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Dean A. Strang
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Keep the Wretches in Order: America's Biggest Mass Trial, the Rise of the Justice Department, and the Fall of the IWW Hardcover – June 18, 2019

by Dean Strang (Author), Nancy Gertner (Foreword)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 9 ratings
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Before World War I, the government reaction to labor dissent had been local, ad hoc, and quasi-military. Sheriffs, mayors, or governors would deputize strikebreakers or call out the state militia, usually at the bidding of employers. When the United States entered the conflict in 1917, government and industry feared that strikes would endanger war production; a more coordinated, national strategy would be necessary. To prevent stoppages, the Department of Justice embarked on a sweeping new effort—replacing gunmen with lawyers. The department systematically targeted the nation’s most radical and innovative union, the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies, resulting in the largest mass trial in U.S. history.
In the first legal history of this federal trial, Dean Strang shows how the case laid the groundwork for a fundamentally different strategy to stifle radical threats, and had a major role in shaping the modern Justice Department. As the trial unfolded, it became an exercise of raw force, raising serious questions about its legitimacy and revealing the fragility of a criminal justice system under great external pressure.
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  1. Print length
    344 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of Wisconsin Press
  4. Publication date
    June 18, 2019
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0299323307
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0299323301
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Dean Strang tells a great story of America’s struggle with fear and injustice a century ago while asking us to consider, ‘What is the story of ourselves that we write today?’ American workers still fight what the Wobblies fought in 1918, as the Justice Department during WWI overreached in ways similar to our current ‘war on terror.’ Dean is a great attorney and a gifted writer, borrowing lessons from the past to help guide our future.”—Alec Baldwin

“Strang humanizes this shameful chapter in our nation’s history. With empathy and verve, he tells the story of abuse of executive power, a partial and wacky federal judge (and autocratic first baseball commissioner), and many ruined lives of working men and women.”—Brad Snyder, author of The House of Truth: A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism

About the Author

Dean A. Strang a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a criminal defense lawyer. He also is the author of Worse than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Wisconsin Press; 1st edition (June 18, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 344 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0299323307
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0299323301
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.39 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

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Dean A. Strang

Dean A. Strang

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Dean Strang is a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a criminal defense lawyer, author, and public speaker. The United States' court system during the Progressive Era, including World War I, and its treatment of outsiders, newcomers, and people at societal margins are his particular interest. In addition to his two books of legal history, he has written several law review articles.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
9 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

ERIC OKEEFE
5.0 out of 5 stars DOJ/FBI as political weapons
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2020
Verified Purchase
It didn't start with J.Edgar Hoover. Dean Strang writes of efforts during and after World War One to destroy an anti-war labor union by abusing the Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice. J.Edgar Hoover later had the word "Federal" added to "Bureau of Investigation." Strang is an engaging writer with colorful details about victims and their oppressors. This history is vital background for understanding today's 37,000 employee FBI and its overseers at the Department of Justice.
2 people found this helpful
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Derek Aktion
5.0 out of 5 stars When free speech, strikes, & anti-war thought were illegal
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2020
Verified Purchase
In 1917 the Espionage Act was passed and used by the Justice Department to cripple the union movement, socialists, and opposition to the Great War. Dean Strang's well researched and clearly written legal analysis of the mass trial of IWW union leaders and members brings light to the dark dealings of the Federal government in squashing dissent. This story echoes strongly a century later.
2 people found this helpful
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Seth Santini
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2019
Verified Purchase
Very insightful and well-written book discussing an important episode in the history of the labor movement and the Department of Justice.
2 people found this helpful
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Shelly
5.0 out of 5 stars An Insightful Look into the DOJ's Use and Misuse of Power
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2020
This book is both engaging and enormously important in assessing the legitimacy and proper role of the DOJ and the FBI. It's the first complete historic account of the DOJ's use of legal power to quell union activists and labor dissenters in 1917, resulting in the largest mass trial in U.S. history. It's well-written, thoroughly researched, and insightful, and it's also disturbingly relevant in current times.
2 people found this helpful
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Earl Swift
5.0 out of 5 stars Smart, clear-eyed, and revelatory
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2021
As he did in WORSE THAN THE DEVIL, Dean Strang here melds vivid storytelling, exhaustive research, and a trial lawyer's assessment of the evidence to produce a new and nuanced evaluation of a shameful episode in U.S. history--the federal government's persecution of the "Wobblies." Now a century passed, the affair is one that some Americans might recall only vaguely, and most not at all; in reopening the case, Mr. Strang introduces new generations to a true tale of governmental abuse that reads like nightmarish fiction.
So it does in his hands, anyway, which is a tribute to his skills as a narrator. Mr. Strang unspools this complex, long-running legal drama so that the reader grasps what happened, why it happened, and what was at stake--and how safeguarding justice requires constant vigilance, now as much as ever. An important story, beautifully told.
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