Poor Man's Fortune

“Roll offers a most provocative and important revision of American working-class history, and one cannot help but feel the drumbeat of post-2016 American politics reverberating throughout these pages.” — Leon Fink, University of Illinois at Chicago

“Roll eschews simplistic explanations in this richly textured and exhaustively researched history. No other book explores this group of miners over such a long period of time, and Roll describes in painstaking detail how they adapted their individualistic aspirations to the shrinking opportunities available in a capitalist marketplace.” — Ken Fones-Wolf, West Virginia University

“Poor Man’s Fortune does critical work in reconstructing the long history of the district (known as the Tri-State, including parts of Kansas and Oklahoma) and in placing workers at the center of a story with national and even international importance.”—Missouri Historical Review

“Jarod Roll has succeeded in rescuing an important and long-neglected aspect of labor history from obscurity. He has done so through diligent research in local records, oral histories, union archives, federal records, and obscure local newspapers . . . Although the events described and analyzed in Jarod Roll’s book ended seventy years ago, he has written a volume suitable for the era of Donald J. Trump and his most vociferous followers.”—Journal of Arizona History

“[A] nuanced, rich portrait of an important aspect of American labor history and a significant addition to a field that still wrestles with big questions about conservative elements within the American working class.”—LABOR

“An important, timely book.”—Arkansas Historical Quarterly

“A well-written book in which Roll provides his arguments clearly and eloquently through an exhaustive analysis of numerous primary sources.”—Labor Studies Journal