Neville Kirk’s Transnational Radicalism examines the lives, philosophies, and activism of the socialists Tom Mann (1856–1941) and Robert (Bob) Samuel Ross (1873–1931). The two shared many goals and strategies in terms of the mainstream labor movement and their mutual desire for “working-class advancement and realization of the peaceful Social Revolution” during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (15). While historians of early twentieth century Anglophone radicalism and members of Australasian socialist movements will discover in the text an innovative model for narrating archives of national and international labor movements of the period, scholars working in contemporary working-class studies will also find that Kirk makes meaningful interventions into the theoretical intersections of class, race, and gender. This is especially true for Kirk’s careful claims about the contradictory aspects of Mann’s and Ross’s conceptions of whiteness and feminism.
Known as a charismatic orator, Mann is most famous for his leadership during...
