Out of This Furnace

By Thomas Bell,

Book cover of Out of This Furnace: A Novel of Immigrant Labor in America

Book description

Out of This Furnace is Thomas Bell’s most compelling achievement.  Its story of three generations of an immigrant Slovak family -- the Dobrejcaks -- still stands as a fresh and extraordinary accomplishment.

The novel begins in the mid-1880s with the naive blundering career of Djuro Kracha. It tracks his arrival…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Out of This Furnace as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

When workers organize, it’s not only for themselves and for generations to come, but also a response to suffering by generations past.

Thomas Bell (born Adalbert Belacyk) brings this to light in his saga of Slovak-American life in steel town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in a family much like the one at the novel’s center. The story stretches from the 1880s into the mid-1930s, culminating with the unionization of U.S. Steel, a megacorporation that had previously crushed all efforts at labor organizing.

No book offers a more intimate view of what it took to bring this company…

Want books like Out of This Furnace?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Out of This Furnace.

Browse books like Out of This Furnace

Book cover of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
Book cover of The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland
Book cover of Labor's New Millions

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,179

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in immigrants, Pennsylvania, and presidential biography?

Immigrants 180 books
Pennsylvania 91 books