Tom Watson Agrarian Rebel [Paperback]

Although Thomas E. Watson championed the rising Populist movement at the turn of the 19th century--an interracial alliance of agricultural interests fighting the forces of industrial capitalism--his eventual frustration with politics transformed him from liberalism to racial bigotry, from popular spokesman to mob leader. Pulitzer Prize winning scholar C. Vann Woodward clearly and objectively traces the history of this enigmatic Populist leader.

A model of its kind...A sympathetic understanding of broad social movements, a mature appreciation of character, an original interpretation of economic facts and factors, an incisive criticism of political techniques, and a literary style that is always vigorous and sometimes brilliant. --Henry Steele Commager,New York Herald Tribune Books

Constitutes the best one-volume history that has appeared of that first crop of social ideals politically garnered in Populism...Also valuable in that it is something more than the story of Populism. It is a striking portait of a man. --W.A. White,Saturday Review of Literature