Elliot Gorn's 'Mother Jones' is a biography of Mary Harris Jones, the legendary labor organizer who became the soul of American protest movements in the early twentieth century. Born in Ireland, Jones emigrated to America, lost her husband and children to yellow fever, and reinvented herself as 'Mother Jones,' the white-haired grandmother who faced down company guards and presidents with equal ferocity. Gorn follows her from the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 through the coal mine wars of West Virginia to the steel industry battles of the 1910s, showing how she mobilized workers through speeches that combined maternal imagery with fiery radicalism. Jones was a contradictory figure: she opposed women's suffrage even while demanding rights for workers, and she cultivated a persona that obscured her actual background. Gorn neither sanitizes her into a saint nor dismisses her significance, presenting a complex portrait of a woman who understood how to move crowds and capture headlines. The book also serves as a history of American labor at its most confrontational period, when strikes were met with militia fire and prison sentences. Readers interested in labor history, American radicalism, or the power of individual activists to shape movements will find a vivid subject and a skilled biographer.