In Dubious Battle (Penguin Classics)

A riveting novel of labor strife and apocalyptic violence that maps the frontier where the masses become a mob.

At once a relentlessly fast-paced, admirably observed novel of social unrest and the story of a young man's struggle for identity, In Dubious Battle is set in the California apple country, where a strike by migrant workers against rapacious landowners spirals out of control, as principled defiance metamorphoses into bind fanaticism. Caught in the upheaval is Jim Nolan, a once aimless man who finds himself in the course of the strike, briefly becomes its leader, and is ultimately crushed in its service.