Paul Le Blanc's, A Short History of the U.S. Working Class: From Colonial Times to the Twenty-first Century is, in the author' s words, an attempt to show how “labor's militant minorities have sometimes contributed decisively to what has happened in our country.” It is, as well, an attempt to provide a “succinct” volume, a brief, usable history of working-class America and its importance in American historical development. The result is this slim volume that reads less as a history of working people than as a history of those who led worker's movements from colonial times to the present. This is not surprising given that much of Le Blanc's previous work concerns revolutionary leaders (V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg) and his active involvement in the labor struggle. But what this brief volume necessarily lacks in scope in its focus on leaders, it more than makes up for in its concise blend of economic, social, cultural and political history to form a readable narrative of US labor that is largely free of arcane jargon, and easily accessible to the non-academic reader.