“‘I have lived like an artist,’ Joe Hill liked to say, ‘and I shall die like an artist.’ Now William Adler has given Hill’s remarkable story an artist’s touch. Careful, powerful, and profoundly moving, The Man Who Never Died is narrative history at its best.”
-- Kevin Boyle, National Book Award-winning author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age“I was delighted to discover that Adler’s scrupulously researched and annotated book is also a page-turner. He’s a wonderful writer—allowing Joe Hill to be as vivid and larger-than-life as I’m certain he was.”
-- Anne Feeney, unionmaid, hellraiser and labor singer“The Man Who Never Died reminds us that it took a people’s movement to create America’s middle class, and that people must get moving pronto for the bosses, bankers, BS-ers, and bastards are going all out to kill it. Adler gives us an epic of investigative reporting and narrative history that will lift you up and, once again, put the ‘move’ in movement. Don’t mourn, read this book, get out of the La-Z-Boy, and join the action.”
-- Jim Hightower, populist agitator and editor of the “Hightower Lowdown”“By giving the stories he heard from his fellow workers back to them in songs, Joe Hill inspired untold thousands to stand—and sing—in solidarity against the worst industrial and political abuses of his day. As Bill Adler makes clear in this richly told biography, Hill’s moral clarity and his fearless criticism of injustice can and should be the music of our times as well.”
-- Bob King, president, United Auto Workers“We are indebted to an author who pursues historical research with a persistence that brings to mind Ahab chasing the White Whale. Readers of The Man Who Never Died will find themselves immersed in and transfixed by the places and events of the American West a century ago. With this book, William M. Adler offers an extraordinary opportunity to think hard about legal injustice, economic inequity, martyrdom, honor, and the limited power of mortality to silence the past.”
-- Patricia Nelson Limerick, Center of the American West, University of Colorado, author of The Legacy of Conquest“With journalistic brilliance and political passion, Bill Adler evokes and analyzes an era, a cause and a martyr whose execution still resonates through history. Blending murder mystery with Movement history, he creates a gripping drama that is not only convincingly documented, but so well written that it’s a palpable pleasure to read. Almost 100 years after Joe Hill’s trial and death, Adler not only “dreams (he) saw Joe Hill last night,” he makes a forceful, eloquent and convincing case for Hill’s innocence. Whether you believe his argument is right or wrong, he has finally given Joe Hill the fair trial and clear verdict he deserves.”
-- Si Kahn, organizer, songwriter, author of the musical play Joe Hill’s Last Will“Joe Hill is a mythic, martyred figure in the history of American radicalism, part labor organizer, part songster. Bill Adler has done a fine job of rediscovering the man as well as the legend.”
-- Sean Wilentz, Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University, author of Bob Dylan in America“Finally. A real Joe Hill biography. Asks all the right questions, digs deep for the answers and reads like a true crime drama à la David Simon.”
-- Steve Earle, singer-songwriter, author of I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive
