Harvey and Jessie: A Couple of Radicals

This joint autobiography offers vivid firsthand reportage of numerous political eventsthe Seattle general strike of 1919, Wobbly labor agitation in Northwest logging camps, early Bolshevik experiments in women's rights, union protest in Pittsburgh steelyards, witch hunts of the McCarthy era. Harvey O'Connor was a labor journalist for Federated Press in 1929 when he married Jessie Lloyd, herself a journalist and the daughter of a Midwestern millionaire. Their story is unpretentiously told in alternating chapters with an assist from Bowler, a freelance writer. Jessie's tone is feisty: ``I've never seen a riot that the police didn't start.'' Harvey, who wrote for the Daily Worker, is unrepentant about his support for Stalinism throughout the '30s. The duo's best moments occurred during the McCarthy era when they defended civil liberties and outspokenly challenged the House Committee on Un-American Activities. (June)