The long and the short of John Ross is that he got involved in everything that might be a threat to capitalism or was felt by capitalists to actually be a threat. Ross made a lot of enemies, both real and ideological. To wax into hipster usage: Any capitalist pig in America would have paid $50 or more to the person who brought them the stuffed and mounted head of John Ross.

This writer was so impressed by Ross's book, "El Monstruo," (a hipster's history of Mexico City) that I snooped around, found a phone number and called John Ross on the phone. Born in 1938, John was sick and dying by the time I got him on the wire in 1911. He seemed glad to hear from me (a big fan) or anybody else, most likely. Death -- I am told -- is a lonely experience prior to one's demise. What happens after is anybody's guess.

Living Americans who think themselves liberal could do a lot worse than spend the next couple of years reading John Ross. "Murdered by Capitalism, for example, is a tragicomic tale that chronicles the history of organized labor in America. If (in reading) it seems that every labor activist in American history was murdered or ruined by somebody or other -- well, the facts are all typical of the things they don't teach you in school while you're a kid. Ross threw in the funny stuff to cheer you up when you're tempted to cry about the murders. ( )

John Ross likes to visit cemeteries and chat up the bones of fallen working class heroes. Their surreal conversations cover decades of American labor history.

E. B. "Eddie" Schnaubelt was murdered by capitalism in 1913. That's what it says on his grave stone in Trinidad, California. He tells Ross how he came to California from Chicago, on the lam from the police roundup that followed the Haymarket bombing in 1886. He insists that neither he nor his brother Rudolph was the bomb thrower.

When Schnaubelt clams up on him, Ross descends into hell to interview President McKinley, then proceeds to a boneyard outside Chicago to chat up the remains of the Haymarket martyrs. Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Joe Hill, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Sacco and Vanzetti, William Z. Foster, and others join the conversation, discussing the pros and cons of communism and other isms. It makes for a lively discussion and even stirs the bones of Senator Joe McCarthy, who butts in all the way from Wisconsin!

John Ross was a long-time radical, beat poet, and freelance foreign correspondent. His book is a zany and raucous historical memoir of epic proportions. It often lapses into poetic imagery. It is pugnacious and outrageous at times, and always unequivocally on the side of working people against their capitalist exploiters. But it is not non-violent. There is even a warning on the cover that "This book contains graphic scenes of revolutionary violence." Ross condones that violence--if it comes from the Left. But otherwise, a good read. ( )