Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904-1920

Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904-1920. Jim Bissett. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. xviii+249 pp. Tables, illustrations, notes, references. $33.95 cloth (ISBN 0-8061-3148-9).

Jim Bissett's well-written book on the Socialist Party of Oklahoma goes down a well-worn path. In his search for a usable past to illuminate the hidden strength of an authentic American radicalism, he finds roughly what most radical scholars find when they indict the spurious openness of American democracy (176). Oklahoma tenant-farmers are exploited, co-opted, and coerced; large landowners and commercial interests are by turns clever and rapacious; an effective protest movement inspires radical insurgents whose appeal becomes "extraordinarily powerful" for a short period (99);...